incorruptible
by hiyoris-scarf
Summary: [THE FIC PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS 'ALL OF THIS.' NO ONE PANIC. PLEASE.] "You've been a surprise from the start, little human girl. You've accomplished for a long time what most humans cannot, and straddled the divide between our world and your own. Perhaps you will shock us all again."
1. affixed

What started out as a drabble series of alphabetical prompts rapidly spiraled into...whatever this monstrosity is. The first nine chapters are tangentially connected, but the plot actually starts around chapter ten, lmao.

* * *

"You know, one of these days you could just _ask_ to come in."

Hiyori speaks with her back to the window, cracked open to allow a ribbon of soft night air into the bedroom. Along with the liquid sweetness of cherry blossoms and grass, there's another smell: a scent that shimmers over her skin. Even in her human body, she detects it. When she speaks at full volume into the silence, something heavy thumps behind the curtain, and Hiyori calmly ignores the hair-raising volley of muttered curses that follows. Yato may be a god, but even gods stub their toes.

She turns around to see him untangling himself from the drapery, and goes over to help him before the curtain rod comes down on his head.

"Just checking for ayakashi," he explains, eyes watering. He balances on one leg, leaning against the windowsill to hold his injured right foot. "I was going to look under your bed next."

Hiyori raises her eyebrows. "Without Sekki? You must be confident."

"Well…they'd be small ayakashi, obviously."

She doesn't stop watching him; his cheeks puff out in thwarted bravado, and he releases his foot back to the floor to cross his arms at her. He's defiant, daring her to scold him.

"Yato."

Hiyori doesn't mind that he sneaks into her house all the time; she really doesn't. Compared to some of his misadventures, a little housebreaking is positively tame. She just wants to know _why_. And since he's without Yukine on this particular errand, she really does know he's lying—as if his refusal to meet her eyes wasn't enough.

Yato adjusts himself against the windowsill in stilted nonchalance, looking everywhere but at her. Finally, he twitches one of the curtains aside, glancing behind it for a split second, and loudly clears his throat.

"Yeah, it looks like the coast is clear—thanks to me. You're welcome."

Her sigh is heavy with resignation. Fine. He can keep his little secrets if he wants, but she has school in the morning.

"Thanks for your hard work, Yato. I'm going to bed."

She swivels away on bare toes, and so doesn't see his pupils constrict in panic, doesn't prepare herself for when he darts in front of her, curling his fingers over her shoulders. Her heels slip backward from the resistance, and his grip spasms around her upper arms. Hiyori stares up at him, rigid, waiting.

"Hey!" he spits out, smiling too much, when the silence elongates uncomfortably. "Hey! I know! You still need someone to help you review for your exam tomorrow, right?"

Hiyori blinks. There is no exam. Yato's gaze bounces between her eyes.

"Luckily for you, for just five yen you can have the most experienced tutor at your beck and call! Hell, I'll just take the exam for you. Come to think of it, it might be easier that way—"

His enthusiasm cracks down the middle when she tugs herself free from his hands. She hugs her nightshirt close to her body while maintaining a safe distance, staring up at him.

"Are you okay?" she asks, quietly watchful. She can live with his attachment to her, which borders on unhealthy codependence; she can live with his secrets. But this chaotic, unfocused anxiety worries her.

Yato's eyes widen, and he repairs his composure quickly.

"Of-of course. I just wanted to offer my services, to make sure you don't forget anything."

 _Forget._

Oh.

Hiyori's throat squeezes tight. Yato doesn't seem to realize his slip, and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. When she suddenly brushes past him on the way to her desk, he turns, surprised, to watch. She grabs the first notebook at the top of a stack, and walks back to push it into his hands.

"Sure. You can read my notes to me. I've heard that when someone reads to you as you go to sleep, the information sticks with you better."

She hasn't heard that anywhere, actually, but it sounds believable enough. Before he can move, she slides into bed, pulling the covers all the way up to her chin. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices he remains immobile in the center of her room, the notebook hanging limply in his hands. Hiyori feels her cheeks start to get hot; she hasn't banked on this sudden strangeness, quivering like a heartbeat between them.

"You didn't pay five yen."

He's still turned away from her, looking towards the large window. The moonlight outlines him in blue, blurring the sharpness around his chin, his shoulders.

"Remind me tomorrow, okay?" she says, pressing her face hard against the cool pillow.

He nods once, and folds himself down to sit against the side of her bed, his head next to her knees. Without asking her where to start, he opens to a page in her history notes. When he starts reading, she doesn't even try to listen to the information. His voice is warm, heavy, weaving around her, and there's no room inside of it for anything but sleep.


	2. bluster

They're lounging on the porch—just the three of them—while Yukine works on his new assignments and Daikoku clangs around in the kitchen. Yato sits next to Hiyori, and while she talks to Kofuku on her other side, he keeps his fingers wrapped carefully around the neck of his dark bottle of coins. It's tucked under his right elbow, well away from the god of poverty. He had been occupied counting through the earnings from granted wishes ("For the fourteenth time today," Yukine had sighed, rubbing his temples) before the other two joined him.

When Hiyori's conversation with Kofuku comes to a pause, Yato asks his idle question. It's something that's nibbled on the corners of his attention every so often, like a hungry minnow.

"Hiyori, how do you always know where to find us? Me and Yukine, I mean. You usually get here a couple minutes after we do, and it's not like our schedules really match up."

There's a bitten, panicked noise, and she goes utterly stiff, which captures his full attention at once. It was just a question—he's really not _that_ curious. But now that he thinks about it, it does seem as though she manages to show up at Kofuku's shrine consistently around the time he and Yukine get there.

He's not invested in the answer at first, but the way her ears burn scarlet is rapidly increasing his desire to learn.

"Hiyoriin has a Yatty-sense," Kofuku chimes in helpfully, twisting pink curls under her ears and looking far too innocent.

"I _don't_! I don't even know what that means!" Hiyori moans, making herself as small as possible while Kofuku begins to giggle evilly.

"It's okay, Hiyori. You can admit that you stalk me," Yato teases, expecting her to react as usual: a light-hearted scoff and maybe a rapid subject change.

Instead, she turns absolutely purple, and starts pulling her ponytail down to occupy her fidgeting hands. As it swishes over her shoulder, a waft of afternoon air lifts a few of the strands towards him, and he catches a whisper of the shampoo she uses. It's a clean scent: it smells nicer than perfume. It smells like the sky.

He accidentally breathes it in too deep, inhaling audibly, and Hiyori springs up as if shot.

"I'm not a stalker, and I can't _sense_ anything!" The blush creeps down from her cheeks to her neck, and she stares in wild misery down at Kofuku, who's now shrieking with laughter. After a beat, Hiyori whirls inside the shrine like a red-faced hurricane, muttering something about a new lesson plan for Yukine. Yato is left reeling in her wake.

"What was _that_?" he asks Kofuku, who throws herself, cackling, onto the grass.


	3. crush

Hiyori doesn't say anything at first when she notices Yukine hanging around her high school a lot more. He's without a certain delivery god, which strikes a wrong note because Yato never seems to pass up an opportunity for cash—always checking up on the clients who discover his ad in the public bathrooms.

Yukine stutters and mumbles when she questions him. He says something about sitting in the back of the lectures to pick up some "overtime," as he calls it.

"It's not like anyone can _see_ me," he points out, drawing discursive patterns in the dirt outside the classroom. She's left her body at her desk, supervised by a disgruntled Yama. Some people might stare if they saw Iki Hiyori standing outside the schoolyard at the end of the day, conversing with her own shadow.

"So Yato's really okay with you taking all this time off from jobs?" she asks, incredulous. His head dips lower.

"Probably."

"…You haven't asked him?"

The regalia shuffles a step backward, murmuring something she can't catch.

"What's that, Yukine?"

He coughs once, and shoves restless hands into his pockets. Deep, dusty lines follow his feet as he backs away from her.

"I just…want to hang out here, okay? The stuff you give me to work on makes more sense if I can listen to classes about it too. Besides, that idiot hasn't gotten any calls recently, so it's not like I'm skipping out on 'work'." He withdraws his hands from his pockets to twirl his fingers in exaggerated air quotes.

Hiyori realizes then, and it provokes a soft, soft ache in her chest: Yukine's growing up. He's matured, even though his form stays frozen in adolescence. More importantly, he hasn't let being Yato's exemplar distract from his ambition to keep learning. Her face is sun-bright with pride, and Yukine shoots her an alarmed glance.

"Don't tell Yato, okay?!" He waves his arms, criss-crossing them in front of his chest as if to ward her off. She grins, nodding conspiratorially, and he huffs his relief. Hiyori doesn't immediately notice his shifting posture, or the way his feet drag deep ruts through the ground as he begins to follow her into the building. Without looking back at him, she says:

"Well, since you're here, why don't we go over what happened in class together? I bet Yama's taken my body to the infirmary by now, so just let me—"

"Hiyori. Wait."

She turns back to him in confusion, enthusiasm dissolving. He wears a sharp grimace, fighting with the guilt of lying and the shame of confessing.

"I'm not here for school, okay? It's—it's…"

Suddenly, he can't dislodge the words; his nose wrinkles.

"It's _what_?"

Behind her, one of the school doors booms open, and the class below hers empties into the yard. Yukine stiffens visibly, and she can practically hear his blood humming with panic. His eyes focus several yards behind her, and Hiyori slowly turns. She recognizes several faces in the group of female students he rivets on—especially the one nearest them. The girl's eyes are wide, and alight with interest as she listens to some elementary gossip collected by her friends over the school day. Hiyori's gaze flicks over the schoolgirl, back to the boy from the Far Shore, and the pieces drop into place. When Yukine looks back at her, she cringes, nearly feeling the electric spike of guilt that must be twinging between Yato's shoulder blades right now.

"Yukine?"

He lifts his palms toward her, mutely wretched.

"It's not like _that_ …not really. It's so stupid. But I thought there wouldn't be any harm in spending some time here. Just watching…"

His humiliation tortures her too, because even though he's been through enough to know that normal human existence isn't an option, he still has to watch his chances slip by. He's still young enough to hurt from that. At once, the softness in Hiyori's chest hollows out, collapsing inward.

"Do you want to leave?"

The question grates on her ears. But Yukine follows anyway, matching her steps on the way to the infirmary to reclaim her napping body.

As the clamor from the yard fades behind them, Hiyori wonders how an existence like hers really looks to the gods: a clear river of small, ceaseless struggles that ripples invisibly between days, years. She may be a friend to Yato and Yukine, but she still has one foot in that river, and it's tugging her downstream. Yukine was dragged out of it prematurely, choking on air.

He doesn't look back at the girls in the yard, and Hiyori sees that river pass under his feet, leaving him dry. She wishes he could let himself hope.

There is just so much water rushing between a human schoolgirl, and a boy from the Far Shore.


	4. dance

Suzuha's cherry blossoms have seen many things over the years, but nothing quite like this.

It was Tenjin, oddly, who brought the radio. At first it plays soft, sedate instrumentals: a calming background to the chatter and laughter of the group. Then, without warning, Kofuku cranks the volume up exponentially; she catches Kuraha by the arm and drags him under the tree branches to fling him about, as if the grizzled regalia weighs no more than a fan. Bishamon's lips press together as she turns to watch, cutting off her conversation with Mayu, and on the other side of the tree, Daikoku nearly drops his glass of sake.

Somehow, Kofuku managed to change the station from Tenjin's favorite classical channel to something more stirring, lilting like a pulse. At first, Kuraha's good eye goes wide in surprise, and his balance suffers. But in a few moments, the surprise melts into a warm smile, and he begins to meet the bizarre grace of his partner's movements as though the two have been practicing for days. Hiyori, standing a little apart from the group of gods and shinki, can't take her eyes off them. She's never heard this kind of music before, and the rhythm tangles in her lungs, making her toes twitch.

Kofuku swings out into the small crowd to pull Bishamon in, and Hiyori watches the tiny binbōgami spin the god of war like a schoolgirl. She reels in the rest of Bishamon's shinki, one-by-one, and for a few breathless minutes all the feet weave in and out of step in a seamless, spontaneous web of motion. Feebly protesting, Yukine lets himself be hauled in by Karuha and Kazuha; Tsuyu sways contentedly, her palm safe against the trunk of the tree; Tenjin is witnessed nearly jigging on the outskirts of the group. Eventually, Kazuma steps in to rescue his dizzy mistress, and he's blushing furiously at the way her eyes shine, how her fingers land to steady herself against his chest. Soon, the instigator of it all finds her real partner waiting a short distance away, and drags him into the midst, his laughter carrying over the melody as he lifts her effortlessly on one shoulder.

"This is going to end _so_ badly," Yato points out, just above Hiyori's ear. She cringes, realizing that Kofuku's touch has already jinxed the party into hopeless chaos. But the hazy, loud magic of the music and the laughter and the colors winds itself around her; she's dragged toward it like a magnet, and her feet won't let her keep still any longer.

"Come on, killjoy."

Yato looks down as her fingers wrap around his, and when he looks at her face there's something keen and golden blazing out of it. He trips tipsily behind her as she pulls him by the arm until they're right in the center of the dance, and the whirl of noise pushes them into each other, much too close. Hiyori keeps an eye on the dancers nearest to them—Bishamon and Kazuma—and does her best to mimic the fluid, simple curves of their movement: the arcing leap as she spins away from him, and back towards. Then again—away—only to return, like a moon in orbit.

Except Yato puts his arm too high, and she twirls heavily into his chest, knocking the wind from them both. She means to give it another try, but he's closed an arm around her waist, as if on accident. Then, his hand tightens on her: unmistakable, deliberate pressure. Her heart hitches.

The loudness is suddenly not music, but something that pounds, pounds, lifting her close against him.

"I'm not really…great at this," he says against her temple, where the words stay, shivering.

"Neither am I," she admits, without breath.

They aren't moving. But, somehow, they're still dancing.

Inevitably, the web snaps. A couple meters away, Kinuha and Aiha's hands fly apart, and the two shinki careen away from each other. Kinuha lands forcefully against Kazuma's back, and he tumbles forward against his partner, somehow tripping two other dancers along the way. Aiha knocks heads with Yukine, who stumbles headlong into the trunk of the tree and plants his foot squarely on Kazuma's glasses, which sailed off in his struggle to avoid landing on Bishamon. In the confusion, someone's flying foot hits the radio, bringing the music to a crunching halt.

After a few very loud, crashing seconds, everyone manages to wobble cautiously back to their feet; the casualties are assessed. Yukine hovers apologetically over Kazuma, who mournfully surveys the loose, shattered lenses of his glasses. His contrition contrasts starkly with Kofuku's lively carelessness as Tenjin, hat askew, berates her for the destruction of his radio. Soon, Tsuyu gently guides her master away, still sputtering with rage, and Daikoku takes care that Kofuku's unlucky fingers don't come in contact with any more of the other gods' possessions.

For once, neither Bishamon nor Yato is in the eye of the storm. The former helps her exemplar navigate his way blindly out of the treacherous tree roots. The latter stands as though frozen, his arms settling close around Hiyori.

She finds herself staring at the dip of his jawline, while the heartbeat of the music vibrates deep in her bones. The activity all around them blurs at the sides of her vision; none of the pandemonium has popped their glowing bubble. Until—

"What in the— _Yato!"_

Yukine's yell pierces the fuzz that seems to surround her ears, and Hiyori looks over to see the regalia holding up a thin cord, plucked out of the tangle of tree roots. Dangling from it is something small—a kind of amulet, or…or a good luck charm—

"Really, Yato?!" she says, exasperated disbelief nipping her tone.

Looking stricken, Yato clutches around his neck with one hand, where the newest addition to his collection used to live. Judging from the expression of enraged betrayal on Yukine's face, Hiyori guesses the trinket wasn't paid for with Yato's own precious shrine funds. He tries to recover, removing his other arm from around her to gesture expansively at the mess under the tree:

"Well, if that had just stayed on, none of _this_ would ever have happened."

"You're so full of it!"

Yukine cocks his arm back to hurl the charm in the opposite direction, and Yato dives. Hiyori's sleeve catches on his zipper, dragging her along with him. They chase each other to the ground in a jumble of flailing limbs, and the back of her head raps against a particularly stubborn root. The impact crackles behind her eyes, screechingly white.

When she lifts her head, groaning, Yukine's face wavers high above her. He smirks down at a wailing Yato, who cradles the shattered charm close to his chest. Pain blooms suddenly from the new knot behind her ear, and she slumps back down, muttering:

"We need to keep Kofuku away from the radio next time."

Kazuma, who's returned for a fresh round of apologies from Yukine, is the only one to hear her. He looks down at the wreckage of the glasses in his hands, and nods vigorously.

* * *

 _(note, 8/10/16):_ little did I know when I wrote this that The Song™ in this chapter is, without a doubt, "Lark of My Heart" by Eliza Rickman.

the site won't let me link to it, but you can look it up easily, and I suggest doing so - it's a beautiful song!


	5. echo

_There's so much noisy red in his ears, and the nora giggles: high and trilling._

 _"See, you've always been this god. See? They fall before us. They fall…like sick fruit."_

 _And Yato does see, within her, a vision of him crushing the skull of the nearest body with a bare foot. The colors are slippery, wobbling. He holds out his free hand, and it's warm, weeping dark lines that map a new pattern over his veins._

 _"Why are you crying?!" demands the nora._

 _Why is he?_

 _Because here he is again, standing in a red-soaked landscape: dripping, witnessing. Such is he, the Yatogami of calamity._

"Yato."

 _Because he never admitted his name, and without it he can never see them again._

"Yato."

 _Because above the song of the blade, he thinks he hears something else._

"Yaboku!"

 _The mother of death shrieks—a sound shorn off, raging with abandonment—and he drops the nora into it. His own name breaks over him, shouted in a human voice: bright as midday, bright as coins._

/

"…Yato?"

Light pries under his eyelids, and the sleep-taste in his mouth is sticky, more bitter than a cherry pit. And someone is shaking him. Hard.

"You're napping on Yukine's homework."

"Nnng."

The shaking jostles his head, and something under his ear shuffles against a hard surface. He's sleeping in Kofuku's shrine with his head on the table, against quite a lot of paper.

"Come on. Up."

Yato detaches his upper body and arms from the low table and rubs his eyes thoroughly. There's more moisture there than should be. As he digs the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, there's still a few popping circles of red; a cold, leftover ripple of the nora's laughter.

Hiyori's spirit lets go of him, sits down, tries to straighten out the sheets that are caught under his elbows.

"Wow, you drooled," she comments, picking up and waving one of the top pieces of paper to dry the damp spots. He checks the corners of his mouth with a thumb, but there's nothing.

"That happens when I sleep while hungry," he says, leaning back on his hands and stretching his spine. His voice is low, creaky, and Hiyori stops trying to line up the papers in her hands with the rest of the stack.

"I guess," she admits, looking long into his face. Yato refuses to meet her gaze, focusing instead on some vaguely defined point over her shoulder. She's opening her mouth to say something else, when suddenly Yukine's voice carries into the room. Hiyori looks away, distracted, as the regalia pauses outside the door to say something to Daikoku. More importantly, she stops studying Yato.

He takes a slow, safe breath, shaking his head a couple times to loosen the stringy residue of the dream. He gets up from his stiff seat on the ground, grabbing the jacket of his jersey from where it lies on the floor. She looks at him again with those viciously perceptive eyes of hers, and he answers her question before her lips move.

"I'm just going to make sure my number's still visible on the street. It'll take me ten minutes."

Hiyori's eyes narrow, and crinkles of suspicion push inward over her nose. But she does nod once, slowly, before going back to writing notes in the neat, fine script that covers half a page.

Once he's out the door, Yato puts a quick quarter-mile between himself and the shrine before his steps bog down. Physical movement doesn't put any distance between him and his echoes—they chase his footprints, they burrow underneath his fingernails, sharp as poisoned needles. His eyes wander to the clouds reaching over the horizon, pushing gray fingers into the trees, and he shivers.

/

 _Never has the grit under his fingers felt so solid and welcoming. Never has the air smelled this lovely, like sky, and summer, and something else—unspeakably sweeter than either. He can't gather enough of it into his lungs. Then, he realizes it's not ground that's against him, but something too smooth, too giving._

 _The short, surprised sound Hiyori makes as he slumps against her anchors him to earth._

 _"Welcome back, Yato."_

 _He can't move much, but he says something—probably some garbled semblance of thanks—and through the burning of the blight and the heavier ache reaching down, bone-deep, soul-deep, she holds him like she can't believe he's there again with her._

 _The nora isn't laughing anymore. He doesn't know where she fell: if she somehow squirmed out from between the fingers of Izanami's pale ranks, or if she was sucked into Yomi forever. Wherever she is, he aims his thoughts at her because, no, she's wrong, he is the kind of god who can change. This is the Yato he will be. Not the one who uses a stray shinki to write the history books red, not the one who sleeps in gutters, shrineless and ragged, not the one who sells pieces of his soul for the price of five yen. He'll be whatever Hiyori remembers of him, because those are the best parts of himself._

 _Because she called to him, and he came back. Because she reached into hell, and pulled him out with her._

/

Yato does an about-face; his footsteps back toward the shrine are quicker than necessary. Yukine and Hiyori both look up when he walks in, and her face lights up, scattering warmth over him. Yukine snorts, scratching out an answer on his paper.

"Great, there goes the peace and quiet," he complains.

"That wasn't ten minutes!" Hiyori says happily.

As bright as midday. Brighter than coins.


	6. filaments

The next few times he comes to her, she gives him more of her schoolbooks to read, but tonight she hands him something else. It's thinner, and she holds it like a sheet of glass before extending it toward him.

"I thought that if you read too much out of any of my textbooks, I'd become conditioned to fall asleep in class."

He doesn't look down at the little book she hands him before he laughs.

"It's kind of late to be worrying about that, don't you think?"

The tips of Hiyori's ears turn pink, and he's intrigued by the odd, seashell delicacy of her skin in the lamplight. When she turns away from him to smooth wrinkles out of the pillow, her hair fans over her shoulder. The back of her neck is curiously splotchy, drops blushing from an uneven paintbrush. She's able to retort as long as she keeps looking away:

"Just…get started, okay? I have to wake up early tomorrow."

Yato plops down next to the bed, adjusting himself as comfortably as possible. Sitting on the floor for many hours isn't luxurious, even for a god. He looks out the window, into the little dips and darknesses strewn by the stars' trembling illumination, and when Hiyori turns out the lamp, the moon's glow still gives him enough light to see. He finally glances down at the title of what she's given him. It's a children's book, and a quick riffle through the pages tells him it contains simplified adaptations of Shinto myths.

"Huh."

The sheets rustle as Hiyori turns on her side to look at him.

"What is it?"

"They captured Bishamon quite accurately in these illustrations."

She aims a kick at him, but her toe only taps his shoulder ineffectually.

"No sass. Only reading."

Yato nods obediently, pretending to shrink away from her wrath. She's nearly as intimidating as a sleepy kitten. He starts at the beginning of a random paragraph, and he's not sure which myth this belongs to—there have been so many different versions, each swallowing and reinventing the others, that it could be one he's never even heard. He doesn't pay any attention to his own voice, even though Hiyori seems to ride away on it, her breathing softening, stretching. He listens for the thread of it, unspooling into the pauses between his words. When her exhales become perfectly regular, he lifts his eyes from the page to the dark shadow of her hair on the pillow.

It's time for him to go when the square of light from the window lifts from blue to cold morning gray, and he can count the eyelashes rimming the curve of her cheek. As he straightens up, joints creaking, there's a smaller snap, inaudible. Every time he steps out her window, trying to forget the music of her breath, he'll cut that same thread.

Again, again.


	7. gossip

"Who, Hiyori? Who is it?"

Sometimes she thinks her friends have sharper noses than ayakashi, because they begin to ask her this question less than a week after she darts into the street to save someone neither of them can see. Now, months later, their curiosity shows no signs of abating, and she wishes there was someone else in the classroom to distract them—they're like puppies worrying a bone. She bends over the book in front of her, trying to turn her back on her interrogators.

"Please— _please_ —I've told you a hundred times. There's no one!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Hiyori sees Ami's smile verge on demonic.

"Oh, okay. So this _divine_ boy is someone you've just…imagined up for yourself?"

The blood leaves Hiyori's head so fast that black specks erupt around the borders of her vision. The words on the page slur against each other, the sentences tipping toward the edges of the page in crazy patterns.

"Wh-what?"

Yama smugly throws in her two cents:

"In case you didn't know, your insta-snooze trick includes sleep talking."

Ice spreads through the whole of her body, and Hiyori prays, prays, _prays_ —but not to anyone she knows personally. Sounding casual, she asks:

"Sleep talking, huh? So…what do I talk about?"

Ami and Yama exchange a meaningful glance, and Hiyori's stomach flattens itself against her spine. Yama retreats innocently into her textbook as Ami answers:

"Well, it hasn't been that often, but the first time you did it was a few days after you got hit. You said something like: 'what the heck is a delivery god?'"

Yama snorts audibly behind the pages, and Hiyori holds in her small sigh of relief. At least she hasn't said anything incriminating, though her cheeks are still plum-bright and something with wings flutters in her throat.

"I don't think you should pay attention to anything I say when I'm not awake," she finally responds, and returns with dignity to the homework they're all supposed to be finishing.

"Wait,"—Ami almost can't compose herself enough to speak clearly—"that's not all."

Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, no, no.

"Just earlier today in class, you fell asleep on your desk—as usual. Then, just a few minutes later, you said: 'Mmm…he smells so _…nice_.'"

Ami is too good at imitation. The top half of Yama's face behind the book is bright maroon, her suppressed laughter causing the pages to wobble. Hiyori wonders just what sins she ever committed to deserve this.

When Ami finally gathers her wits, she sits with hands folded on her desk, looking for all the world like an ancient judge. Hiyori knows any lie she tells will be transparent, but she's too ruffled to speak.

"We just want to know who this good-smelling delivery god of yours is, Hiyori. That's all."

Yama's voice is hoarse and squeaky, and she looks over the top of the book at both of them.

"Yeah, so spill already! Who is it? Is 'delivery god' some sort of code…?"

Never mind Ami smirking at her like she holds a knife against the strings that tie Hiyori's life together; never mind Yama sinking under the desk, still chuckling maniacally. Before she can make a sound, Hiyori knows every pillar of her pride is on the point of disintegrating.

"I have to go!"

She yanks her bag off the desk, and all her loose books clatter to the floor while her friends stare, open-mouthed. Hiyori dashes out of the room, passing a few people in the halls. She doesn't notice if they look around at her—they probably do, since she sprints like there's a fire beneath her heels.

When she finally stops, it's on the edge of school property, her back against a high fence and the wind in her face. It takes her a few seconds, and several deep breaths, to realize how foolish she is. It's only a little sleep talking.

There's just one problem. Hiyori's been falling out of herself for long enough to know that never—not _once_ —has her body started talking without her. She also knows that when her body fell asleep both the times Ami mentioned, her spirit stayed with it. The first time was when she was still exhausted, recovering from her time in the hospital and from the shock of becoming a half-phantom. This more recent time…well, she's been more than a little distracted since the change in her semi-nightly routine.

So she sleep talks. So what? It's a little silly, but she can't really help it.

But…what else does she say? What else has she already _said?_

Hiyori's ears turn pink, only partly because of the brisk wind. She remembers her bedside clock, blinking steadily past midnight—one…two…three—and the quiet lines of Yato's fingers as he turns pages.


	8. hands

Yato hears murmurs about his little shrine in Takama-ga-hara, and although he tries to turn his ears away from them, they slither into the back of his brain like so many graveworms.

That it's plain. _"There's hardly any decoration on it. Even that wretched binbōgami has a more respectable shrine than_ that _."_

At Yato's shoulder, Yukine shoots him a warning glance.

That it's flimsy. _"It's practically built out of toothpicks. It won't last a decade, let alone a century."_

"Yato…"

"I know. I'm not gonna do anything stupid."

That it's crude. _"Disgraceful, really. To build a shrine—even a pitiful one like that—for a god of calamity. What kind of warped, deviant human would do such a thing?"_

His head whips around toward the whispers.

" _Sekki_!"

It's easy for Yato to ignore his regalia's half-uttered admonition, because at this point Yukine is nearly as infuriated as he is.

"Does anyone have something to say to my face?!" Each syllable quivers with rage, but Sekki's blades are dangerously steady. Yato hears a hiss, and his grip on the twin hilts tightens, knuckles creaking. The low chatter subsides, and instead, hundreds of eyes bore into him. Some are afraid. Most are contemptuous. When he turns to depart, mutterings erupt in his wake, more frantic and malicious than before.

/

Yato glares down at the younger boy, fighting the urge to shout obscenities at him.

"Come _on_ , Yukine, why'd you have to tell her about that?!"

Yukine doesn't seem to think he's crossed a line, and matches Yato for every ounce of annoyance in his tone.

"It's impossible not to tell Hiyori stuff! She always finds out anyway, you know."

Through his enraged sputtering, Yato can't contradict his exemplar. Yukine drives his point home:

"Besides, you completely lost your cool over a few worthless rumors. You can't do anything like that again, not if you want to be taken seriously as a god of fortu—"

" _Yeah_ , okay, I get it. Fine, Yukine."

Yato abandons the conversation, walking away while Yukine is still mid-sentence, and he can easily envision the steam pouring from his regalia's ears.

Yato is more annoyed than he should be, and that's probably because Yukine is absolutely right. But his criticism sets Yato's teeth on edge, and he doesn't even want to _think_ about what Hiyori has in store for him. She'll either act like an elementary school teacher, drawing on a never-ending reserve of patience with a hot-tempered student—or she'll send him face-first into the nearest brick wall at terminal velocity. Yato can't totally decide which he'd prefer.

Yukine should have known it was wrong to tell Hiyori. After all, she built that shrine. She should be more offended than anyone. And yet, Yato expects to find himself _again_ at fault, _again_ asking her to forgive him for doing something reckless, something poorly planned—something that could have put either him or Yukine in danger. He keeps walking, strides quickening in tempo with his aggravation. No one insults his shrine. _His._ It has his name carved on it—the shallow strokes fragmenting the two halves of his identity. He's so ready to argue with her about it that he lets his feet take him to Hiyori's house, and he invites himself in through the window. He'll challenge her on her own ground.

Except, she's not there.

A rapid march through the rest of the spacious house reveals that it's empty, and Yato ends up standing in the middle of the hallway, unsure what to do with all the futile combativeness he built up on the way over. Sitting still isn't an option, so he drifts through the rooms, his breath still slowing from the quickness of his walk and the irritation boiling up from the bottom of his throat. It dawns on him that he's never been alone in the Iki house for this long—or _ever_ , really. It's not very good manners to explore someone else's living space without their permission. But, after all, Yato isn't a god of etiquette.

He starts in the most interesting room—after Hiyori's, that is—the kitchen. Armed with snacks, he parades through the rest of the house, learning as much as he can about her family as a few framed photos and little knick-knacks can tell him. There's photos of the Ikis on vacation; at school events (one of these shows a tiny Hiyori holding up a trophy, which Yato spots a few shelves over); at gatherings with extended family. In other photos, Hiyori is with her friends—there's a big group of them, and they're all smiling so much that his eyes hurt. A bouquet of hectic, too-broad leers—all except hers. She gives the camera the same indulgent, silvery bright smile she bestows on him, which is somehow very frustrating.

Yato stops looking at the photos, even though there's shelves and shelves of them. He turns away, spotting a low shelf set discreetly outside the main flow of the room. On it sits something else: something less carefully curated than the elegant, framed pictures on display. It's a fragile birdhouse, marked with a name ("Iki Masaomi—the brother," he remembers, surprised with his own ability to recall it). He picks it up, carefully, without leaving crumbs. The color and quality of the tiny construct seem so familiar…

Yato moves far more rapidly through the rest of the house, this time on a search. He scowls; if only he had been less of a wreck when she actually _gave_ him the shrine, then maybe he could remember more of what she said while she was _giving_ it. He bursts into one of the unopened bedrooms. Yes, there it is: a little, clean workspace on the floor, and the room still even smells like her. Hiyori's strange, special sky-scent has grown stronger.

Standing there, where his first shrine was created, Yato doesn't expect to feel anything. It's not as though it were a great ritual—no ceremonies, no incense, no music. Just Hiyori, building something for him. It was probably after she had finished all her homework, and told her parents she would go to sleep quickly. Then, after sneaking into her brother's room, she would add the little touches to her handiwork that made it more than just a shrine. She remembered to represent Yukine, before he was named—when he looked like snow. She put a crown on the front, cleaner and sharper than the dingy one on Yato's tracksuit. He stares down at the place where she sat for hours, carving his name, slowly, grip digging into the sharp edges.

In another part of the house, the floorboards groan.

"Hi, Yato."

He's yanked out of his thoughts, and there's no time for him to look guilty as she pushes the door open. He _does_ make a noise that sounds like a gasping fish, and Hiyori's eyes track to where he was just looking.

"Yukine told me what you heard about your shrine. Does all that really bother you?"

Her question spins its wheels in his mind, and the words stumble over themselves on their way out of his mouth.

"Well. Uh. Y-yes?"

Her hands twist restlessly inside each other, and to his unmatched horror, her features begin to collapse inward. Her voice is porcelain-thin as she responds:

"I mean, I didn't really have a lot to work with when I made it. So I guess it's not _that_ good, but I wasn't really sure where to begin anyway. I've never made a shrine before—"

Yato's not sure how he ended up right in front of her, or why her face turns the color of a sunrise when he grabs her—nearly shaking her. All he knows is that he's made a huge, _huge_ mistake—one of epic foot-in-mouth proportions—and that for him to fix it, she needs to be looking at him.

"Wait! No, it's nothing like that!"

The despair on her face lifts marginally, and with it, Yato understands. Finally.

"You _made_ it." He reaches down from her shoulders to take her hands, which hang loosely at her sides. He stares at them, at the few paler strips of skin which she must have covered with bandages.

"The shrine itself isn't the important part. It's the work behind it—the hands that built it. Do you see…?" he adds helplessly, hoping she'll figure out his point, because he isn't sure how to explain it. But Hiyori keeps looking at him, expectant, and she isn't pulling her hands away, so he tries to continue.

"When a group of people builds a shrine, that's significant. That god has a strong following, and it's usually something they brag about. It's something to be proud of."

 _It's not plain. It's simple; every mark has meaning. No frills, no excess. It shows what's important._

She nods, forehead crinkling.

"But when _one_ person builds a shrine. That's…something else. That's an act of intense dedication. It means that just one person thought this god was so important to them, that they needed to create something absolutely unique."

 _It's not flimsy. It's delicate; it was built to be forever cherished._

He realizes what he's saying, exactly, and his blush finally matches hers. He lets go of her hands.

"So…so the rest of them are all really just jealous. And…yeah, it was pretty dumb of me to get upset about that."

 _It's not crude. It's irreplaceable. A first shrine always is._

Even though Hiyori has dropped his gaze, he can see the beginnings of a smile trembling at the corners of her lips.

"You're right, it _was_ dumb of you."

Yato inhales sharply when she hugs him: a quick embrace that lasts just long enough for her to whisper:

"But if you hear anything like that again, let me know whose ass to kick, okay?"


	9. inebriated

Daikoku sometimes thinks himself quite put-upon. Right now, for example, would be one of those times.

Kofuku hiccups gleefully, watching Yato get redder and redder in the face as the bottles of sake on the table keep disappearing.

"You can't beat me, Yatty! You'll puke everywhere, and then Daikoku will throw you aaaaall the way to the moon, hee-hee…hee…" her words trail off, trickling into the bottom of her glass as she nearly face plants into it. Dizzy as she is, she still isn't even close to Yato's level. For all her childlike traits, her tolerance does not number among them.

"I won't lose this one," Yato slams his open palm onto the table. "Besides, you know gods don't - HIC - puke."

Despite that undeniable fact, it's clear he's miles past drunk. Merely sitting upright is enough of a challenge for his balance that any motion could easily send him toppling over onto the floor.

"Yes, oh yes, you will! And then you'll owe me a million yen! I'll be rich, so rich, and you'll have to do chores for us forever to earn back the money!" Kofuku cackles, swaying precariously over the fourth bottle of sake and sloshing quite a lot of it onto her clothing. Daikoku thinks it's probably time that he made his presence known and got this imminent disaster under control.

"You'd lose it all in less than twelve hours, you know, and probably cause a global economic meltdown while you're at it," his voice booms above Kofuku's head. She gazes up at him blearily.

"H-haiii! Daikoku, have some!" Yato yells, swinging his legs around to try and get up, and instead manages to windmill himself onto the floor. His forehead smacks against the smooth boards. The storm brewing between Daikoku's eyebrows deepens as Yato flops all the way down with a groan.

"I leave you two alone for an hour…" He shakes his head, slowly. "Yato, you'd better not have spilled any on the cushions. Those are brand-new."

"Whee!" Kofuku giggles dizzily as Daikoku swings her up into his arms after confiscating the sake.

There's the faint noise of a door sliding open, and Yukine walks in from the front. His cheerful expression deadpans when he sees Yato sprawled, twitching, on the ground.

"Oh good. Nice to know he's hard at work getting us more jobs. Hi, Kofuku."

"Yuki! Don't worry…I'll give you some of the money I just won from Yatty."

He grimaces. "Sure."

After looking over Daikoku's shoulder blearily, Kofuku's brow furrows.

"Where's Hiyoriin?"

Yukine shrugs, still staring pointedly at the barely conscious Yato, who seems to animate slightly at the mention of Hiyori.

"I'm not the one who's made a habit of stalking her."

The noise that comes from the incapacitated god might have been indignant. It might even have started out as words at one point, but Daikoku can't make out what they are. Yato's close involvement with the floorboards prevents effective communication. So Daikoku leaves Yukine to deal with that particular situation while he leaves to take care of Kofuku. She smells reelingly of sake, and his nose wrinkles. As he hoists her through the door, Hiyori walks in from outside, cord curled primly over her elbow. She smiles up at Daikoku—and then the smell hits her, too.

"Hi! Did…Kofuku fall into a brewery?"

He makes a gruff noise, and jerks his head toward the room where Yato and Yukine are.

"More or less."

Right before Hiyori walks over to peer curiously into the room, Yukine bursts out of it with exasperation written all over his face.

"He tried to stand up and nearly concussed himself. So he can just hang out there for a while."

Hiyori's face shows both concern and exasperation as she brushes past him to check on Yato. Daikoku decides his hands are already full enough, so he leaves to take care of his pungent goddess.

In the next room, the first thing Hiyori sees is an astonishing number of empty sake bottles littered over the table and floor. She wonders how long Kofuku and Yato have been at it; it would take approximately three days for any human to consume that amount of liquor.

"Yato?"

There's a wounded groan from the other side of the table, somewhere near the level of her ankles. She walks around to see him, sprawled and drooling on the floor.

"Oh my god."

Yato's hand shoots into the air: "Tha'ssme!"

Hiyori feels her left eye start to twitch.

"So this is what you do when you're not working. Good to know."

"C'mon H'yori. Don't be maaaad."

His hand flops back down to the floor and he rolls himself toward her, quickly curling himself around one of her feet.

"Yato, get off my boot."

"It's soft…"

"That's disgusting."

He makes a noise that sounds like a cat being petted.

"Yato, get off my leg!"

Yukine bursts into the room, wielding a ladle.

"What's he doing now?!"

"He's purring on me!"

Yukine drops the ladle and tugs Yato away from Hiyori's boot. Yato hisses, and makes more incoherent noises as Yukine props him up, one of his shoulders wedged underneath Yato's right arm.

"He needs to go to bed and sleep himself back to normal. I wish he weren't so heavy—"

Yukine staggers under Yato's weight, and Hiyori quickly slings Yato's other arm around her shoulders to help balance the unwieldy load. Yato seems utterly incapable of using his feet, and they drag uselessly behind him as Yukine and Hiyori struggle out of the room.

"Hiyori, your hair smells good," Yato slurs, his head bobbing loosely on his neck like a puppet with cut strings.

Yukine grinds his teeth audibly.

"That's my hair, you perv."

"I didn't know you used ladies' shampoo, Yukine!"

Hiyori almost starts laughing at Yukine's groan of frustration. But instead she yelps, as Yato's head lolls to the opposite side, sending his sharp cheekbone slamming into her shoulder.

/

"This is completely your fault, you know."

Daikoku plunks Kofuku in the bathroom and sobers her up with an ice bath, while skillfully evading her kitten-sharp claws.

"Mean, mean, mean Daikoku," she mutters. She's shivering, but her eyes are focused again.

"Just think of what you put Yato through. His tolerance isn't even close to yours. I wouldn't be surprised if he has to sleep this off for a week."

"We were just having fuuun! And I learn so much about Yatty when he's drunk; all his funny secrets come out and go wheee…" her fingers twirl a crazy pattern in the air, indicating the secrets' path from the ether into her own ears.

"Huh. One could almost count that as an ulterior motive."

Kofuku presses her hands together, batting her eyelashes up at him.

"It's harmless! Although if Hiyoriin heard what I heard, she might not think so."

Daikoku's surprised choke elicits a gleeful cackle from her. "Kofuku, what does that mean?"

"Yatty's secret, not mine!"

Daikoku had several ideas about what Yato might have said about Hiyori, based on a few past experiences taking care of him after an overindulgent drinking binge. Now he was down there with her, slobberingly intoxicated, and, in Daikoku's opinion, prone to entirely too much honesty.

"You…did you plan this?!"

Kofuku shrugs, pulling herself to an upright sitting position without any assistance. "I just wanted to see what would happen."

Daikoku is about to leave her in the bathroom and hurry downstairs to preserve Hiyori from an uncomfortable situation, but before he moves, he hears right outside the closed bathroom door the awkward, dragging sound of two people carrying a dead weight between them. He stops at the sound of Yukine's voice.

"You could at least try to put one foot in front of the other!"

Then he hears Yato drawl: "Am trying. Won't move."

Daikoku rolls his eyes, and goes back to sloshing cold water over Kofuku's shoulders. She squeaks, and swats at him.

A few minutes later, from the room where Yukine and Hiyori are eventually able to ditch their load of drunk Yato, Daikoku hears: "Hiyori, don't leave!"

Hiyori's much quieter response is lost, but Daikoku gathers that it was a refusal. Then, Yato apparently settles for his next best option.

"At least leave your boots here!"


	10. jitters

**I suddenly wanted to write this with a plot, so this is the part where the alphabetical titles become more and more of a stretch. Happy reading! :)**

* * *

They've fallen into a rather enjoyable routine: one unmarked by battles, ablutions, executions, or any other form of particularly nasty cosmic dispute. It's an unsustainable routine, perhaps, but pleasant while it lasts. Hiyori doesn't bother asking herself why she looks forward so much to the time she spends daily with Yato ( _and Yukine_ , she makes sure to add, _and Kofuku, and Daikoku too_ ).

One day, she realizes how dependent she's actually become on his dependency. In class, when her phone stops lighting up every few seconds with his name, she finds it a bit jarring. He rarely gives her phone screen a chance to darken before the next tweet comes in. Typically, this barrage of messages continues until she shows up in person. But today at school, her phone is completely dim. She finds herself picking it up repeatedly to check if it's died, because the silence is so unusual.

She still goes over to Kofuku's after school ends, but this time she doesn't know what to expect. She finds Yukine alone, already working on his self-assigned homework.

"Yato has to be in Takama-ga-hara for a little while," Yukine explains, when she asks about the radio silence.

"Oh. Okay."

Yukine hears something off in the way she says it, and his eyebrows scrunch together.

"This isn't like when he disappeared before—this is some sort of official 'colloquy' thing that shinki aren't allowed to go to. They won't even let us in the building where it's being held. But Bishamon is keeping an eye on him and Kofuku while they're there—only because Kazuma asked her to, I'm sure."

This gives Hiyori some satisfaction, although she's a bit surprised that Kofuku was summoned too. The image of the mighty Bishamon shepherding Yato and Kofuku around Takama-ga-hara—like a harried schoolteacher—brings a bubble of laughter to her lips.

"She has to be loving that," she comments with a grin, and settles down to review Yukine's homework with him.

The Yato-less days have their own brand of quiet restfulness. Hiyori recognizes this, and uses the time to her advantage. She can't remember the last time she managed to get this far ahead in her studies. Her phone only buzzes once every couple of hours, but the long, unbroken stretches of silence are so unfamiliar to her that she almost doesn't know how to cope with them. The quiet becomes hollow: there's a faint, static ring in her ears.

It's been several nights now since he came to read to her in her room, and her pulse skips when she realizes that those hours are totally private to them. Yukine doesn't even know about them—and her _parents_ …oh, gods. To tell them that she goes to sleep with a strange boy reading next to her bed nearly every night? Hiyori cringes.

Days keep passing; it's been nearly a week, and when neither Kofuku nor Yato show signs of returning to the Near Shore, she wonders if there's any grounds for worry. Most of her time in the last few days has been spent with Yukine and Daikoku, and occasionally Kazuma, who drops in frequently to check on his pupil.

"Do colloquys usually take this long?" Hiyori asks Daikoku. The four of them sit around the low table, and as the three shinki chat amiably, Hiyori wonders if she's the only one neurotic enough to have doubts. Daikoku shrugs.

"I don't have an accurate frame of reference. They usually don't like Kofuku to go to these things, so I can't say for sure."

"They're really that scared of her?" Yukine manages to ask, forming the question around an enormous mouthful of food.

Daikoku can't hide his satisfaction, though he makes an effort.

 _"_ They're _terrified_ of her," he says, smirking.

Yukine and Kazuma both laugh, and Hiyori smiles, though she wishes his answer were more satisfying. Kazuma recognizes her tension, and takes pity.

"You don't need to be concerned, Hiyori. This is well within the typical time frame for a colloquy. Also, days pass much differently in the heavens than they do here; the three of them may come back feeling as though just a few hours have passed."

This gives her some slight relief, and a little of the tightness that's been building up in her shoulders slips away. She smiles gratefully at Kazuma, and goes back to the food in front of her that shows signs of only being picked at.

"Yato still could have given me some warning before he took off," Yukine grumbles, finishing his plate and leaning back on his hands.

"It _was_ a very abrupt summons," says Kazuma. "Veena barely had enough time to tell me she had been called in before she had to leave."

"Same with Kofuku," Daikoku agrees, and Hiyori sits up straighter. It sounds like there's some urgent business in the heavens—something that requires an emergency colloquy—and the other three around the table don't sound even slightly concerned.

"Well _that's_ not normal, is it?" she asks, trying to keep her voice level. "Shouldn't there be more advance notice? Especially if these meetings usually take such a long time."

Daikoku gives her a look—a strange, knowing look that, for some reason, makes her cheeks burn. But again, it's Kazuma who gives her an answer:

"It's not really for us to question, or to judge. The colloquys are part of the gods' duties, and it is our duty as exemplars to keep things in order until they return. We don't typically ask about scheduling arrangements."

His tone is kind—even a bit amused—but Hiyori still feels rebuked. She doesn't ask any more questions.

On her way back to her own home, she sees the turbulent spiral of an ayakashi storm rising. It's very far away, and she has no reason to worry about it. Still, she averts her eyes from the sight. The image of the storm remains before her eyes as she hurries home: like a flurry of ashes scattered high above the horizon.


	11. kick

The next day, Hiyori doesn't immediately go over to visit after school ends. She avoids the place, even though she knows Yukine will be a bit hurt. First, he's had to deal with with Yato disappearing to this colloquy without any warning. Now, he'll think she's abandoning him too—by leaving him alone to the tender mercies of Daikoku's slave-driving work ethic.

Finally—for Yukine's sake—Hiyori almost talks herself into making the trip. But in the end, when she walks outside and sees another storm twisting in the sky, she decides it's probably better for her to stay where she is. This storm is much closer than the one she saw last night. It's also the second one within two days, which seems, at the very least, unusual. It's a small one, though, and even as she watches it, the cloud of energy, vibrating with the wails of ayakashi, begins to dissipate. Despite this, Hiyori thinks it's best for her to remain at home.

She goes into her room to start studying, opening the window wide to let in air. Spring has officially ended, and the sky of early summer seems to buzz with heat and insect wings. When Hiyori pushes open the curtains, she can't help inhaling, waiting…nothing. There's no familiar scent in the nearby vicinity. Even if she were to drop out of her body to increase the sensitivity of her nose, she knows she wouldn't find it—which she finds inordinately disappointing. Sitting down at her desk, she tries to concentrate, but her mind just doesn't cooperate with her. It keeps jumping from one unrelated idea to another, and after twenty minutes of fruitless effort she's nearly ready to slam her book shut in frustration. Why can't she _focus_?

In the next second, her question answers itself. It's because of her worry. Well, really Yato's worry, but it's rubbed off on her as well. She's learned a hard lesson from forgetting him twice, and if there's something she's learned a little _too_ well, it's not to trust her own memory. Because of that, her mind won't let her forget Yato. In fact, it won't let her think about anything else.

"Great," she mutters aloud, resigning herself to the fact that she won't be of much use until he comes back.

Since it seems to be the only thing she _can_ do, Hiyori starts mentally ticking off the important things she needs to remember about him, just in case. Just in case she accidentally ends up trusting herself too much, and some details slip through the cracks.

Yato (previously Yaboku). He charges five yen per wish. He was once a god of calamity, but he's not anymore. He's always wanted a shrine, and she built him his first one. He treasures that shrine, and he keeps it—where _does_ he keep it? Hiyori can't remember, but it's a small detail, so she moves on to the more important pieces of information. He's a very good artist, especially after hundreds of years of practice. He loves capypers. He _really_ loves capypers. She smiles, softly, without realizing it.

The stillness and the sunlight make everything feel slow, including her thoughts. The last thing she needs is another unscheduled nap, but somehow her head still ends up on her desk, cheek pressed to the warm surface. What else about Yato must she be sure to remember?

He wants to be a god of fortune. He wants to be a god who makes people happy. He wears that stupid tracksuit all the time; she wonders if he even wore it to the colloquy. That would be really funny. He also carries that wine bottle full of coins everywhere, although now that he has a shrine, he doesn't fawn over the bottle quite as much. He still doesn't have a very good sense of physical boundaries, despite what she and Yukine have tried to teach him. He smells really, _really_ nice. He cares religiously about the people who depend on him. He cares about Yukine—he loves Yukine. She knows it, with the deep resonance of truth.

The air in her room is so heavy, and it smells so nice…but she can't go to sleep, even though her eyes are closed and she's halfway there already. She has to keep remembering things.

Yato is accustomed to being forgotten by everyone he meets, so the people who do remember him are special. To him, Hiyori is special.

He loves her.

He's _in love_ with her.

The progression of thought is so natural, and so perfectly obvious, that her mind carries her there under its own power. It has that same truthful resonance. Of course he's in love with her. This is not a surprise.

Hiyori's eyelids snap open from her half-nap. For a moment, she can't do anything but stare at the spine of the closed book directly in front of her. The rightness of the realization collides with her like a kick to the gut. Yato loves her; of course he does. She feels it with an anchored certainty that she can't ignore, even if she were to try.

And to ignore it is her first instinct. What is she supposed to do with the knowledge that he loves her? What is her reaction supposed to be?

Paralyzed with this startling, yet completely unsurprising new awareness, Hiyori doesn't immediately notice the nice smell, which has crept subtly through the motionless, early summer air into her room. When she does notice it, the smell itself seems somehow connected to her epiphany, but through the vestiges of sleep-fog, she can't figure out why _._

"Hey, Hiyori, quit sleeping. I'm back!"

She straightens upright so fast that she causes something in her neck to pop. Yato grins at her, eyes squinted in the sunlight, as he balances half-inside her room. He's straddling the windowsill and—for once—seems to be actually waiting for her to invite him all the way inside.

"Yato?"

Her voice is croaky from sleep, and his grin broadens.

"I guess you didn't forget me!"

He says it as a joke, glossing over the thread of legitimate worry he must have had. Hiyori wonders vaguely why he would vanish so abruptly, and for so long, if he really were anxious about being forgotten. But the more pressing issue—the one that renders her unable to do anything but stare blankly at the god on her windowsill—is how the _hell_ she's going to act normal around him now.

"Of course I didn't forget you," she says, sounding a touch more aggressive about it than she meant to.

Yato doesn't seem to care, and takes her words as an invitation to hop all the way into her room, walk over to where she sits at her desk, and pull her into a pulverizing hug. Hiyori still doesn't know how someone with so little physical mass is able to squeeze her until purple dots swim across her vision, but she doesn't complain. She wouldn't have the air for it, anyway.

"Good," he says quietly, right next to her ear.

The strength of his scent makes her a little lightheaded. Maybe it's just his week-long absence. Maybe all she forgot is exactly _how_ nice his smell is. _Yes,_ she thinks. _It's probably that._

He lets go of her, luckily, before any of her ribs crack. And before she can say anything else, he's on his way out the window again.

"Yato, what the—where are you going now?!" she splutters, annoyed.

He's already off, silhouetted against the yellow sky, but he pauses to shout back at her:

"I have to go get my tongue-lashing from Yukine! See you tonight, Hiyori!"

She stares out the window, nonplussed.

He came to her first, before even going to tell Yukine he came back. Was he _that_ worried she'd forget him, or did he just…want to see her? Her thoughts reel wildly, pivoting in place around a central tether: he's in love with her, and whether from ignorance, inexperience, or sheer lack of observation, she simply failed to notice it. And, once the numbness of shock wears off, she realizes she'll have to make sense of it one way or another—and soon. But in the meantime:

 _See you tonight, Hiyori!_


	12. love

This evening, she does end up going over to visit, leaving her body snoozing peacefully at her desk. Kofuku is back with an ecstatic Daikoku (despite the fact that it's only been a week, the two act like they've been parted for a century), and Yukine has evidently decided that the worst Yato will get from him is the normal amount of sass, paired with a few biting insults for good measure. Kazuma doesn't make an appearance this time, since he's probably busy welcoming Bishamon back to her house with the quiet joy that comes at the end of each of their short, yet inconvenient separations.

To Hiyori's surprise, she doesn't have to worry about acting normal—at least, not for now. It's actually not that difficult to behave normally when everything has so quickly gone back to the usual routine.

In fact, it's much easier to ignore the fact that Yato is in love with her than it is to ignore the undeniable effect of that knowledge on herself. And, in the meantime, another realization starts creeping up on Hiyori. Like being submerged in a lake that is the perfect temperature—as warm as skin—she can't tell what's engulfing her until it's too late to try and tread water.

That night, it rises up to the tops of her toes when she catches Yato tucking a blanket around Yukine after the younger boy falls asleep after dinner. Yato makes sure the fabric gets folded in around Yukine's toes, and his eyes are the softest she's ever seen them. It keeps silently swallowing her, waist-high when he leans against her shoulder as they sit a little while longer on the floor with Kofuku and Daikoku ("You look a bit _too_ comfortable," Daikoku mutters to Yato, which only makes him snuggle closer). The growing knowledge of it overtakes her, a little faster every minute, until Hiyori at last allows herself to say it—silently, of course.

She is in love with him, too.

Despite its impossibility and stupidity, and in the face of the irrefutable differences that make them god and human, she loves him, and he loves her.

In the wake of this burst of insight, she desperately tries to control her blushing. Which is pretty difficult, especially when his head droops all the way onto her shoulder and he begins to drool. On the other side of the table, Kofuku snickers sleepily.

"He missed you, Hiyoriin," she says, as Daikoku gets up to clean what's left of dinner off the table.

"Hmm," Hiyori answers, finding it hard to access her own vocabulary.

"He kept trying to ditch me and Bisha and find a way to leave the colloquy," Kofuku says, yawning. "But Bisha said some really nasty things to him after the third time he tried it, and then he listened to her."

Hiyori vaguely considers that if Bishamon so much as looked at her the wrong way, she'd do whatever the war god asked of her. To turn Kofuku's attention away from anything sensitive, she asks:

"So, what was this colloquy about?"

Kofuku stops mid-yawn, and her tiny frame tenses almost imperceptibly.

"Oh, the usual stuff."

Hiyori's interest—though it was minimal when she asked—is piqued by Kofuku's obvious desire to not talk about the subject.

"What is the 'usual stuff'?" she presses.

The binbōgami's hesitation is more telling than her answer.

"Mostly about all the storms that have been happening recently. That's why I was there—the heavens wanted me to predict where the biggest vents are likely to open up."

There has been a measurable increase in ayakashi activity. It hasn't escaped Hiyori's notice, although she hadn't thought it enough to warrant a gods' meeting. However, if it _is_ an issue, it would at least explain the suddenness of the colloquy.

She nods—though she also suspects Kofuku of not revealing the entire truth—and Yato's head is jostled on her shoulder. He jerks suddenly upright, blinking awake, and seems to realize what—who—he had been using as a pillow. His face turns a rather spectacular shade of purple.

"Sorry, Hiyori! Did I make you uncomfortable?"

Hiyori stares at him and stumbles over her answer; she can't very well tell him she was extremely comfortable— _too_ comfortable. So instead, she says:

"No! No, you didn't."

Both of them fall silent, angling their self-conscious gazes away from each other. Kofuku snorts.

Hiyori thinks she may have had more questions about the colloquy, and for some reason she was very interested in having them answered—but they've all sailed directly out of her head. Why did she care about it, really?

"Kofuku, can you come help me in here?" Daikoku calls from the kitchen. Kofuku springs to her feet, throwing a look of pure mischief at Yato and Hiyori.

"Coming, Daikoku!"

She vanishes, and the silence presses down on the room. It bears down on top of Yato and Hiyori, tortuously drawn out by the unexplainable awkwardness between them.

"Well. I'd better go home," she finally says, after casually clearing her throat. She stands up, obviously and painfully aware of the inches between their bodies.

"Yep," he says.

And that's all he says.

"See you tomorrow, Yato."

"Uh huh."

She pauses in the doorway, and even though she's already sort of said it twice, she tries one more time:

"So…bye then!"

Her entire body is on fire with embarrassment. _Oh gods. Just get out._

"Bye," he says back to her, without even looking around.

A few minutes later, she's balancing on top of a telephone pole on the other side of the city, and she realizes that his voice cracked a full octave when he said it.

She arrives home and puts her body back on, immediately finding herself heavy with sleep. Hiyori doesn't even bother changing into her nightshirt before toppling into bed. Despite her exhaustion, it's hard for her to find the peace of mind to actually drift off, but after twenty fitful minutes of tossing and half-dreaming, she manages to fall asleep. Even in sleep, Yato's scent chases her, and her swift, colorful dreams are punctuated with his face, his voice—so real that she nearly wakes from it. Finally, the dreams stop, and she plunges into a chasm of warm, black unconsciousness. Far too soon, she's hauled up from the depths.

She'd recognize that damn smell if she were dead.

He's standing about halfway across the room, his body turned toward the open window as though he were just getting ready to leave. When her eyes finally focus, she sees that he's looking back at her over his shoulder, and the expression on his face would be appropriate for someone who had recently been electrocuted. His jaw is slack, eyes wide and staring at her in unconcealed disbelief.

"Yato, what are you—why are you in my _room_? And what's wrong with your face?"

He gapes at her for such a long time that Hiyori starts to worry about him. Then, his lips move silently for a few seconds. At last, he manages to force out a few words.

"Y-you love me?"


	13. moonstruck

This is near the top of Yato's list of "Stupid Things I Have Done While, Surprisingly, Not Drunk." At the very top is inciting a small war (on purpose), closely followed by starting his own mafia (on accident). But this is probably at least number three—and it might even displace the whole mafia situation, depending on the outcome.

As he makes his way to Hiyori's house, he's not even sure he has anything to say to her. All he knows is that his conversational limitations of "yep," and "uh huh," have not worked wonders on her impression of him.

Another storm is forming on the outskirts of Tokyo, but Yato pretends he doesn't see it. That can easily wait until morning. Storms and vents have always come and gone. However, Yato being an idiot, while not exactly a _new_ development, can at least be dealt with without calling on Sekki.

He still doesn't think of his method of entry as "sneaking in" to her room, though in the past she has uncharitably referred to it as such. It's just something people do when they care about someone else: they give them hugs, they buy them food, they watch them sleep in the middle of the night. All of these behaviors are very normal signs of care and affection. Besides, he's been welcomed in here so many times in the past, that he's assumed it's a standing invitation. So when he gets to her house, he clambers lightly in through the cracked-open window—only to see that she's already dead asleep. She didn't even change out of her school clothes, and it really doesn't look like her sleep is all that restful. There are wrinkles working in her forehead and between her eyebrows, like the ones that appear when she's trying to help Yukine with a difficult math problem.

Yato feels a knife of guilt slip in between his ribs; he never wants to see her face look that anxious because of him, and despite his best efforts, it probably is. As he stands, watching her, the wrinkles deepen, and she mutters something inaudible. Maybe she senses his presence in her sleep, and it's bothering her even more. It was a poor idea to come here.

Maybe, if she had been awake, he would have given her a simple apology—if only for the fact that he left without saying anything. As he stands in the middle of her room, feeling aimless and more foolish than ever, he begins to turn away. He takes one or two slow steps toward the open window, but before he crosses the full length of the room, he hears his name.

Yato turns around, thinking she's woken up. His first impulse is to steel himself for the explosion that's sure to happen when she discovers him, uninvited, inside her bedroom. But when he sees her face, her eyes are still very much closed. The wrinkles between her eyebrows are now smoothed out, and she looks completely peaceful.

There's no doubt about it, though—she said his name. She smiles, and sighs:

"Nice smell, hmmm…"

Her words trail off, and he stands transfixed. Is she talking about _his_ smell? The corner of his mouth quirks up in a grin. _Huh._ Very interesting.

There's no way he's going to leave now and miss out on all the other complimentary things she might say about him, so he prepares to settle in. Before he does, he decides to shut the window. Even though the night outside looks quiet, the wide open rectangle of darkness makes him uneasy. He turns around to go close it, but then he hears one more sleep statement from her. Something that glues his feet to the floor and swivels his head mechanically back toward her.

She repeats it. The first time was just a mumble, but the second is as clear as a bell.

"I love you, Yato."

His weight shifts, and the floorboards groan under his boots. The sharp creak wakes Hiyori up, and her eyes flutter open. He's the first thing she sees, but she doesn't look angry—yet. She looks disoriented, and blinks quickly a few times, like a swimmer coming up for air. Then, shaking the rest of the sleep off herself, she sits up in bed. At last, it clicks with her that he's there: in her room, uninvited, in the middle of the night.

"Yato, what are you—why are you in my _room_? And what's wrong with your face?"

His face. What's happening to his face? Is there something he's supposed to be doing with his face? What's the most acceptable thing to do with one's face in this sort of a situation? There's a windstorm between his ears, but in the midst of his internal chaos, one fact shines with incandescent clarity.

"Y-you love me?"

For a few seconds, Hiyori doesn't react.

Then, all at once, she does something that blindsides him. She starts to laugh: long, and a little hysterically, rocking back on her bed and holding her chest like she's in pain. Tears force their way under her eyelids, and she keeps laughing for so long that Yato finds himself feeling a bit insulted.

"He-hey…! What the hell, Hiyori! It's not funny!"

"I'm…sorry!" she gasps between bursts of hectic giggles. "I really don't know. I don't know…"

She doesn't finish the sentence, but at last manages to take a deep breath, and presses her palms to her cherry-colored cheeks. She slides her legs off the bed, sitting on the edge of it and facing him. Her mirth has passed, just as suddenly as it arrived, but there's still a spirit of a smile on her lips.

"Yes," she says, simply.

Yato doesn't know why, but he was expecting a bit more of an answer than that.

"Yes…you love me?" he repeats. Just in case she got confused.

"Yep. Kind of a lot."

Oh. _Oh._

"How—how much is a lot?" he asks. He wonders how obvious it is that he's trying not to hang on every syllable of her response.

Kind of a lot. _A lot._ She loves him _a lot._

Hiyori takes another deep breath, and her voice is steady when she answers. All except for the last word, which breaks slightly.

"Well…how much do you love me?"

It throws him off. There's no good answer. There doesn't seem to be enough language for it. He doesn't know if he can phrase it in a way she'll understand.

In the meantime, she seems to interpret his silence incorrectly. The wrinkle between her eyebrows reappears, and the longer he stands there, fighting with his inability to express himself, the more she looks as though she might want to curl up and disappear.

"I mean," she starts, in confused humiliation. "I mean, _if_ you do. I just—I thought that—"

"No, no. Hiyori, wait."

He goes to her, and her mattress creaks as he sits down. Her hands have started twisting together painfully, and he reaches out to cover them with one of his.

"You asked: how much."

Her back stiffens, and her hands stop wringing themselves in her lap. She nods, unable to look at him, and finally, the words trapped in the back of his throat start pouring out.

"How much do you _want_ it to be? Hiyori, you've never given me a chance to figure out how much I'm supposed to love you, because everything you've done demands more. I can love you as much as you'll ever let me. I can love you up to and beyond whatever limits you set."

She turns her head to look at him in the silence of complete astonishment, and Yato thinks it would probably be a good idea for him to quit there. But he doesn't.

"I can love you until I deserve you."

In the silence after he stops, breathless, he manages to clear his throat. Hiyori still stares at him, her lips parted in surprise.

"So however—however _that_ much is. I guess," he adds, self-consciously. He's a little shocked at his own candor.

Hiyori looks at him like she's just now seeing him. Then, instead of answering, she gives a small chuckle. Yato frowns.

"Why do you keep laughing when there's no joke?" he asks peevishly.

Hiyori just keeps giggling, and one of her hands slips out from under his. It settles over his fingers. Her nails trace the inside of his wrist.

"You're just…way more poetic than I expected, Yato. That's all."

"Is that bad?!"

"No," she answers, after a small pause. Her voice is barely above a whisper, and she's not laughing anymore. Yato shivers as her eyes roam over his face. Finally her gaze falls to his mouth, and along with it she gets a dreamy, half-lidded expression. Yato sees it, and smirks.

Hiyori's eyes widen in realization; she blushes so deeply that her face turns almost as dark as her hair. She pulls both her hands away from his, off her lap.

Now it's Yato's turn to laugh, and when she gets flustered and turns away he catches her chin, gently. He turns her face back toward him, as delicately as though she's made of glass.

"I've had many years to perfect the art of the honest love confession, Hiyori," he says, still holding her chin, even though she's not turning away again. "You should be lucky you aren't swooning in my arms by now!"

Her eyebrows lift in evident skepticism. Then, her breath catches as he leans toward her, pressing his lips to her warm forehead. There's a couple seconds of silence, unbroken by the still, heavy night air around them.

"You're completely ridiculous," she whispers at last, and he can hear the smile in her voice.

/

It turns out that the aftermath of a confession of requited mutual pining is a bit awkward. So after she draws his scent deep into her lungs, Hiyori leans back, but doesn't meet his eyes. He clears his throat again, which is apparently a new nervous habit of his. Then, after a few moments of silence, he says:

"Just now—you didn't really seem surprised. Did you even wonder how I knew that you—you loved me?"

His voice cracks like an adolescent schoolboy's on the first "you," and it makes her smile. A thousand-year-old god. Sure.

"Oh, that."

"Yes, _that_."

He sounds even more confused. Hiyori sighs.

"I figured it was the sleeptalking. It's gotten to be a real issue for me these days."

A wretched idea occurs to her, and her head snaps up.

"I didn't say anything _else_ —did I? Just the part about being in love with you?"

Yato frowns a little at the second half of her question.

"Oh, ' _just_ ' that?!"

"Please, answer me."

The spots of pink high on his cheekbones darken.

"Well, you also said that I smell… _nice_."

"Oh my god."

The heat of her blush won't fit behind both her hands.

"That's all, I swear! Why are you—what the hell, Hiyori?! It's not that big of a deal!"

He sounds genuinely baffled as she scoots herself away from him, toward the head of her bed. Trying to sound casual, she says:

"Um. Yeah, it's not a big deal. Not at all. It's just a little embarrassing for you to find out like that."

Her back is pressed right up against the wall at the top of her bed, so she has nowhere to go when he moves closer to her. Not that he encroaches too much on her space, but still: that nice smell becomes a lot stronger the closer he gets.

"Let me get this straight. You are fine with admitting that _you love me_ in your sleep, but when you happen to let slip that you think I _smell good_ , that's suddenly worth panicking about?"

She pulls a pillow out from behind her and smooshes it against her stomach, gripping it with bone-white knuckles. But he makes a point.

"No," she squeaks.

Yato doesn't say anything. Hiyori wouldn't be surprised if he's completely nonplussed by her behavior. She would be hard put to explain it herself. He just sighs.

"Well, I think you're a little insane, but if it makes you feel better, you smell really… _nice_ …to me too."

Hiyori's fingers clench around the pillowcase.

"What?"

"Yeah. You always have. Like, uhh…like the sky. Clean."

Hiyori is staggered by this discovery.

That she smells nice to him; has always smelled nice to him. _Like the sky._

"Oh."

Her powers of articulation are truly fearsome. But, based on the look he's giving her, Hiyori doesn't feel like she needs to say much else. Maybe all the relief that she isn't able to voice is somehow manifesting on her face.

"You really are the weirdest," he states, and she gives him a betrayed look.

"You're one to talk! Who even thinks about what the _sky_ smells like, I mean…seriously?"

Yato just laughs at her, and scoots a little closer. She clenches the pillow so tightly it seems like her fingers might break.

"I don't know," he admits, reaching out to twirl a piece of her hair around his forefinger. "All I know is that it smells nice. And so do you."

Hiyori wonders why the edges of her vision are swirling tipsily, and realizes it's because she's actually not breathing. She takes a long gulp of air, and when she does, Yato's eyes—twin, fiery blue moons—are on a level with hers. He's asking her something.

"…you okay? Hiyori?"

She blinks; her ears start working again.

"Hm?"

"I asked if I could…kiss you."

Did he ask her that? Yes, indeed he did. So she nods.


	14. naïve

Hiyori has been kissed once, and it was worse than being slapped. Unexpected, invasive.

But Yato cups her chin in one hand, and the other rests over both of hers as she still grips the pillowcase. She waits, waits, feeling her shoulders get tighter with every second, and partially dreading the moment their lips will meet. What if it's like her first kiss? What if it doesn't meet either of their expectations?

Then, it happens. It's not a slap. It's the gentlest thing—a question of a kiss, that barely brushes her lips.

Her eyes squeeze shut, and Yato must sense her tension, because he pulls back immediately. Her eyelids fly open again.

"No good?" she asks, afraid of his response. Even in the moonlight, she can tell his face is beet-red.

"Well…you look a little bit like you're waiting to have a tooth extracted. It kinda kills the mood."

Hiyori gulps. It's true, it's not the most relaxed she's ever felt. But she really, _really_ wants to kiss him.

So she sets her jaw, leans forward, and does.

He stiffens briefly, and she can't blame him. But then his lips curve up against hers, and it becomes a soft, seeking kiss. He smells so, so very good. Her eyes flutter closed as his hand, that had been twirling a strand of her hair, finds its way to her cheek. He strokes it, tilts her face slightly to the right.

It's not a deep, or long, or particularly passionate kiss. But while it happens, Hiyori does forget what it was like to _not_ have him there—to not have his scent soaking into her skin and clothing, to not have the familiar warmth of him at her fingertips, to not have his face written under her eyelids. Was it ever possible that she could really forget him?

Hiyori thinks not, and when the gentle pressure of their first real kiss ends, he has to see that mirrored on her face.

Yato's face stays near hers for a moment; for a few seconds, they share the same exhale. His thumb ghosts over her cheek, and then his hand moves down to cover hers where it rests over the blanket.

"Hiyori, do you want me to stay?"

She thinks about it. She thinks about trying to go to sleep after _that_ , with him next to her. She thinks about trying to calm the livewire that is her body, knowing that Yato is mere inches away. She thinks about what might happen if she _doesn't_ try to calm it, and her head nearly explodes.

"I don't know if that would be…the best idea," she says, carefully. She can only hope he understands she's not trying to kick him out.

Well. She is. But not in an entirely bad way.

"Ha. You're always right, aren't you?" he says, making it a joke—even though he's still blushing more than she is.

"A lot of the time, yes," she returns lightly.

"Well then." He rises from the side of her bed, quickly lifting himself onto the windowsill. He glances back over his shoulder at her, and she's shot through with blue electricity.

"I hope you at least have good dreams."

And he's gone. The room prickles from his presence, and Hiyori still has a hard time getting to sleep.

/

The next day, she dreamwalks through school. However, she doesn't fall asleep in class—maybe because even her reality doesn't seem all that tangible. But when she comes home, she finds ayakashi in the living room.

There are just two of them, and they're small. A little cute, even. They look a bit like baby rabbits—except they've each got too many legs and they're muttering _nice smell, nice smell_ , as they watch her, which Hiyori has never witnessed a baby rabbit do even once.

She takes out her phone, first making sure that the house is empty and that no one will be close enough to hear her. Despite her best efforts, her heartbeat is wildly uneven as she presses *call*.

"Hi, it's me."

 _*Hellooo, my goddess.*_

He's trying to be smooth over the phone, and the effect is totally, hilariously lost. All at once, she's completely at ease, and laughs out loud.

"Please don't, Yato."

 _*What?! I thought it would be cute…*_

"Not the word I would use. More like…obsequious?"

 _*Maybe_ you _need to put down your books once in a while so you stop saying things like "obsequious."*_

Hiyori grins at her phone, and watches the two little ayakashi hop around next to the bookshelf.

"Anyway, the reason I called is because there are two ayakashi who decided to move in with me. They're each about the size of an egg, so don't worry too much. I just thought I'd give you some work."

 _*Fine—though I'm disappointed you only called me with a job in mind. It will cost you, you know.*_

"I think I can spare five yen."

 _*Not talking about the five yen.*_

At that, everything above her neck feels very floaty and warm. If she had a clever retort at one point, it's flown right out of her head.

"…Oh."

 _*See you in a bit, Hiyori.*_

Even through the phone, she can hear his shit-eating grin.

About half a minute later, Yato and Yukine appear out of thin air on her doorstep, the latter in the midst of an unsuccessful attempt to chastise his master.

"—and just because Hiyori calls you doesn't mean you can walk out on another client. If your reputation wasn't borderline already, you'd be ruining it."

"It's fiiine, Yukine; he totally didn't care."

"He was in the middle of a sentence!"

"Sentence schmentence."

Hiyori gives Yato a stern look after quickly gathering the gist of what's happened.

"Did you really abandon a client?"

He rubs the back of his neck while looking at the floor. Then, he glances up at her through his eyelashes, and Hiyori thinks—no, she's certain of it—he's trying to look seductive.

"I would do much worse for you, my goddess."

Yukine claps a hand over his mouth, like he's about to projectile vomit. Hiyori can do nothing but stare. Obviously this version of Yato is not the same red-faced mess who showed up last night in the middle of her room.

"What _happened_ to him?" she asks Yukine, who has started inching away, putting as much distance as is reasonable between himself and Yato.

"Well, uhh. You…probably know that better than I do," Yukine says, turning the color of a ripe tomato and staring somewhere over her shoulder. Hiyori soon finds herself matching his blush.

"Oh! So he, ah, he told you? About…?"

Yukine gives the still-smoldering Yato a side glance, and has the good grace to look embarrassed on behalf of his master.

"Yeah, he couldn't shut up about it—all night."

Yato abandons the bedroom eyes and gives Yukine a look of utter betrayal, which goes fully ignored. Hiyori can't help but laugh at the pair of them.

"Sorry about that, Yukine," she says, her apology genuine. "And about giving you more work after such a short night."

"He's _fine_ ," Yato declares, and without further prelude, throws his hand out.

"Sekki!"

The twin blades look unnecessarily large indoors, and Hiyori has some brief concern for the safety of the ceiling. Still, Yato makes it to the living room without incident, where the ayakashi are still bouncing around underneath a side table. _Nice-smell-nice-smell-nice._

Hiyori looks down at them, and, as sometimes happens, she feels a surge of empathy. They're so small, and right now they seem so harmless—but the more negativity they feed on, the more they will grow, until they're the size of the monsters that can engulf entire humans. Entire crowds. She knows the only proper way to deal with them is to destroy them.

A quick slash, and a thrill in the air like lightning, and the ayakashi vaporize in a small cloud of bright red sparks.

"Should I be worried that I found them in here?" Hiyori asks, once Yukine is back in human form. Yato shakes his head.

"Nah. Someone in your family is probably just a little more stressed than usual. Still, let us know if any more crop up, okay?"

His voice is just casual enough to make her suspicious, and she throws him a sharp glance. But there's nothing deceitful in his face that she can discern, so she nods in acknowledgement. It's true, now that her home is ayakashi-free, she feels a little lighter—the air even seems cleaner. Had she really considered letting those things survive? Their effect must have been greater than she knew.

"You need to go back to your _real_ job now," she tells Yato. He hangs back with her as Yukine heads for the front door.

"C'mon, Hiyori, just five more minutes?"

He latches himself to her elbow, the picture of pathetic supplication.

"No way!"

She feels like a mother, delivering a strict lecture to a kid begging to stay up until midnight. From the front of the house, Yukine makes an impatient noise.

"You'll see me later!" she points out, and Yato's nose wrinkles.

It's a little dizzying how quickly he can go from lovestruck adolescent, to ageless deity, to pouting child, all contained in the same skin. He's always been a bit of a mystery to her that way.

"Okay, fine. But don't forget the promised payment!"

He detaches himself from her elbow and, still looking morose, shoves his hands into his jersey pockets.

"You mean this?"

She tiptoes, wraps her arms around his neck, and plants a sound kiss directly onto his mouth. Then she retreats to a safe distance, terrified at her own audacity. Yato makes a strangled noise, and reaches up to touch his lips. Then, like he's waking up from sleepwalking, he shakes his head.

"Uhh. Yes. Your debt's square."

She coughs, smiling self-consciously.

"Good."

Yukine calls back to them:

"Are you two _done_ yet? _"_

Hiyori walks to where Yukine waits, muttering, and gives him a smile that's both affectionate and guilty. Yato trails behind her, still looking a little bit awestruck.

"He's all yours, Yukine. Thanks for taking care of that little problem for me!"

/

"So, are you going to keep lying to both of us, or just to Hiyori?" Yukine asks him after they leave.

Yato blinks. The kid's observant. Yukine crosses his arms and waits, stubbornly, for Yato's reply.

"About what?" he says, trying to dodge the issue. Unsuccessfully

"You and Kofuku were being so damn cagey about that colloquy, I knew something was up. And just now, when you told Hiyori she had nothing to worry about—that wasn't true either. You can't lie for shit, Yato—not to the two of us. It's obvious Hiyori's catching on, too."

Yato's eyes widen, and he stops short.

"No she isn't!"

Yukine snaps his fingers in victory.

"Ha! So you _do_ admit that you're hiding something."

 _Dammit._

"I was going to tell you eventually," he admits, then pauses. "But not her."

Yukine is silent for a second. When he speaks, his voice drops in disappointment.

"Really? So you don't fully trust her. Not even now."

Yato, alarmed, shakes his head.

"No, it's not that! Not at all. You'll understand soon; I promise, I'll explain it to you."

From the way he says it, Yukine knows it will happen, so he gives a curt nod.

They return to the man whose job they abandoned, and after a few more strenuous hours of work, finish successfully repotting his entire herb garden.

When they get back to Kofuku's, Yukine doesn't have to remind Yato about his promise. The moment they're inside, Yato finds both Kofuku and Daikoku, rounding them up from the front of the shop. A stone-faced Daikoku brings a few cans of beer out for himself, Yato, and Kofuku, and after a brief hesitation, grabs one for Yukine as well.

"You might need it, kid," he says, as his only excuse.

They all sit around the table, and Yukine doesn't have the slightest idea what to expect. Even Kofuku wears a rather businesslike expression, which he takes as an indication that whatever he is about to hear is either extremely boring or extremely dangerous. As he listens to Yato talk for the next few minutes, something dark and heavy forms in the pit of his stomach.

At the end of his explanation, Yato pauses, waiting for Yukine to fully comprehend.

"Do you see now, why Hiyori can't know about this?" Yato asks.

Yukine slowly nods, and takes a sip from the can in front of him. Daikoku was right—he does need it.

"Yeah," he says, cautiously. "I guess."

"It's _not_ something she needs to worry about."

Yato puts emphasis on every syllable, like he's concerned Yukine might be going deaf.

"Yukine, swear you won't tell her."

At that, he balks.

"Yato, I hate keeping things from her, especially something this big. Are you sure—"

"Please."

There's an edge of desperation in Yato's voice. And, despite his misgivings, Yukine sees that all he's trying to protect is Hiyori's happiness. Which, incidentally, is a priority for him as well.

But this secret doesn't sit well with him—not in the slightest.

Daikoku clears his throat. He and Kofuku have been silent up till now, and Yukine turns to him, expectant.

"There's also the fact that her knowing could add to any growing negative energy, and increase the likelihood of her becoming a target for ayakashi. Given the current situation, that seems like something to avoid."

Yato nods eagerly, and even Yukine has to concede this point. There's no good reason to risk endangering her—even if she will be mad as hell about it after the fact.

"So what do we do? How do we take care of it? Is heaven going to step in at any point?"

Daikoku and Yato look at each other—a glance that Yukine doesn't miss. So the answer to that is probably "no."

Daikoku clears his throat.

"They don't really see the point, Yukine. The way heaven views it, things will work out in the end for them no matter what happens. They're more interested in protecting themselves, so—"

" _Sooo_ we just need to keep doing what we've always done," Yato interrupts, cheerily slapping Yukine on the back. "Kick ayakashi ass."

Kofuku hiccups, setting her third ( _third!_ Yukine notices in surprise) beer can on the table.

"I've already let Bisha know where the vents will probably open up within the next week or so. She should be able to take care of a lot of those before they get too big!"

Yukine's jaw hits the floor.

"Bishamon is helping us?!"

Yato coughs.

"She was…uncomfortable…with heaven's stance on the issue. You know. She's got the whole 'just and benevolent god' image to uphold."

"Well then, what the heck is everyone so freaked out about?" Yukine asks, starkly astonished. "She's the best god of combat there is!"

Yato nearly spits out his beer.

"I'm _right here_ , Yukine!"

"I said god of _combat_ , not _herb-potting—_ "

"Which we got _paid_ to do, you ungrateful—"

"Well, we almost _didn't_ , because you _walked out_ in the middle of a job."

"You're really never going to let that go are you—?!"

"Cut it out!" Daikoku growls, looming over the two of them and hauling each of them up by the collar. Yato flails in dismay, while Yukine settles for giving both of them his worst stink-eye.

"If you put half as much effort into killing ayakashi as you do in bickering with each other, then no one has to worry."


	15. omen

There are no fewer than three vents spewing their toxic fountains into the sky of Tokyo when Bishamon does her next patrol. Her mouth sets in a grim line, and she feels the anxiety of her combat team even as they try to keep their own emotions in check.

"It's all right," she tells them. "We can handle this. Please don't push yourselves."

There's a chorus of: _Of course, my lady,_ and _Don't worry about us_ , and a quiet _Be careful_ , from Chouki. Then, Kuraha carries them in swift bounds toward the nearest vent. Ayakashi scar the air in thick clouds, but the shots from Bishamon's pistols and the sharp tail of her whip wipe through them to create clear patches of sky.

The vent is as big as one opened by Kokki, and if Bishamon didn't know as well as she does that Kofuku had nothing to do with this, she would suspect her of being its cause. She reverts a few of her shinki to contain it, instructing them to force the opening closed within boundary lines.

"If we destroy the ayakashi in the immediate vicinity, the vent will weaken," she tells the rest of them.

They already know this, but hearing it from her redoubles their determination. In a short amount of time, the cries of the corrupted spirits have weakened to a low murmur, as just a few flail about, trying to evade Bishamon's scourge. She cuts the last of them down with a final ruining blow, and the vent, collapsing within the white-hot lines of the boundary to the diameter of a coin, closes with a _pop_.

She looks down at the ground where it used to be with some satisfaction.

"All right. On to the next."

 _Veena, look._

Kazuma's arrows point her toward the north, and she sees a familiar figure balancing, one-footed, on a telephone line. The slim, double-blades of his weapon rest over both shoulders.

"Need a hand, Bishamon?"

She makes a low noise of exasperation.

"Nice of you to show up, Yato, but as you can see, this one is taken care of."

He points with one of the swords toward the two other eruptions visible from his high vantage point.

"I can take the one to the east, which leaves you with just one more. And really, why would you turn down a favor?"

She nearly laughs. _As though he's the one giving out favors._ But she takes the courteous route.

"Fine. Make sure you're thorough."

Yato gives a cheeky salute, then, using the slack of the telephone line as his launching momentum, rockets toward the eastern storm.

Kazuma locks on to the location of the third vent, and as Bishamon climbs onto Kuraha's back, she hears the tear of Yato and Sekki destroying ayakashi more than a kilometer away. She grudgingly has to admit the force of their alliance, even though she still has her concerns. Her own team, combined with Yato and Yukine's strength, is formidable. It might be enough.

But she's breathing a little harder than usual after closing the next vent, and feels the concern of her shinki gathering up in knots on her spine.

"I'm fine," she tells them, trying to sound like she actually is.

She arrives at the last vent in time to witness Yato destroy the final ayakashi with an overenthusiastic swipe that nearly takes out his own eye. Her shinki don't even need to contain the dying vent within borderlines—it closes on its own.

"Good day's work!" he quips, seeing her sitting there, watching him. "For me at least."

She notices that his wrist is blighted, and grimaces.

"You should take care of that."

He glances at the mark in nonchalance.

"Oh. Yeah, probably. Revert, Yuki."

The boy materializes next to him, and regards Bishamon's team with an unreadable face.

"Well I, for one, don't see what all the fuss was about," Yukine says. "Closing those vents was nothing."

Yato throws an arm around his hafuri's neck, mussing his hair.

"That's the spirit, Yukine!"

Bishamon's lips press together.

"Overconfidence will lead neither of you anywhere good."

Yato releases Yukine, crosses his arms, and gives her a challenging glare.

"I guess we will see about that. Just hold up your end, and we'll hold up ours."

Bishamon nods once, curtly, and gives Kuraha the order to take them home. By the time she glances back over her shoulder, Yato and Yukine are specks on the ground, next to the crater where the vent has been sealed shut.

/

"Well, that's not good," Hiyori's father says when he gets home from work.

Hiyori pauses from her activity in the kitchen, where she's putting together some bags of extra food for Yato and Yukine. Following Dr. Iki's gaze, she sees that he is looking at the television screen, which shows an alarming spike in Tokyo's crime rate over the last month. The graph makes her think of a heart monitor—the giant, collective vitality of the city squeezing tight in one panicked pump.

"More suicide attempts too," he notes, walking into the kitchen and patting her on the shoulder. "Makes me happy to come home. There's been so much…gloom at work recently."

Hiyori gives the screen one more look; the news anchor's serious, professional demeanor should put her at ease. These things just happen.

Suddenly, she remembers the strange relationship between the human world and the heavens. Could there have been some upset between the gods? Over the last few days, she's noticed even more storms hanging over the city, like curtains of ash. Such an event in Takama-ga-hara would, at least, explain the colloquy. It might even explain Yato's discernible reticence the other day, when she asked him to deal with the small ayakashi in her house.

She takes out her cell phone; her finger hovers over his name. Then, she sees the time—it's nearly reached her standing appointment with Yukine to go over homework. Her phone goes back into her pocket, and her eyes travel back to the television.

"It's the weather," her father says off-handedly, as he grabs a can from the refrigerator. "This cloudy heat is really messing with everyone's heads."

He pops the lid, and without turning around, Hiyori hears him walk toward the door.

 _Kii, kii._

Inside the bag of snacks she's preparing, her hands go very still. She turns her head to watch her father leave the room. An ayakashi shaped like a disembodied beak clings to his suit collar, swaying with his steps as he turns down the hall. The beak opens again. _Kii._

She takes a calm breath, telling herself this is exactly what Yato warned her of. Her father has faced extreme levels of stress since the outbreak of ayakashi at the hospital—even more so now because of the unexplained higher concentration of storms. So of course a little of the gloom will cling to him when he returns home.

Her eyes return to the television screen.

There's a shadow stretching over the earth, and humans can feel it. Hiyori can feel it. Something is not right.

At that moment, she realizes this must have something to do with the gods' meeting. There's no chance that so much anxiety and disturbance in the human world is not affecting the heavens. So Hiyori goes to her bedroom, lies down on the bed, and springs easily from her own body and toward the window.

Yato's scent isn't difficult to single out; she finds it among the noisy stench of ayakashi, and bounds away in the right direction. As soon as she attains enough of a vantage point to be able to scan the horizon, she can easily figure out the origin of the scent. She sees a vent spouting ayakashi, and, gauging from the distance, it's close to the nearest subway station.

A few minutes finds Hiyori watching the showdown from her hidden perch on a nearby tree branch. She stays out of sight from both Yato and the ayakashi, but her view of the vent is totally unimpeded. And there's something else that she doesn't miss.

There are so, _so_ many ayakashi. There are snakelike ones, weaving through the streets and coiling around pedestrians' ankles. There are ones shaped like huge birds, their wings creating a rush of dark noise in the air. There are insect-like ayakashi, dipping their needle-thin beaks into people's ears and whispering haunting thoughts. Hiyori notices one shivering above her own head, muttering _good smell, nice smell. I'm hungry_. She breaks off a large twig and swats at it until it floats off, joining with the body of another, larger ayakashi. They squeeze into one another, amorphous skins merging to create a phantom that takes the shape of a fist-size mosquito.

 _Good smell._

Hiyori leaps down to a lower branch, hoping that the ayakashi will get distracted by the hurricane of its fellows, swarming to attack Yato. It doesn't.

 _Smells good. Just a taste. Please, let us taste you._

The ayakashi swoops down toward her, and Hiyori balances on the branch, stance light and fluid—just like Touno would have taught her.

"Oh, no you don't!"

Her foot connects with the side of the ayakashi's bulging head, and it careens away, spinning in crazy circles like the world's ugliest top. No one will be tasting her today.

The rest of the whirling spirits ignore her where she sits, and she sees the end of the fight, and Bishamon's arrival. She's not close enough to hear the words exchanged, but she gathers that Bishamon is somewhat aggravated, and Yato seems to be blithely complacent.

Once Bishamon leaves, Hiyori descends from the tree, dodging a few errant, fleeing spirits as she heads toward Yato and Yukine.

"Hey!"

They're facing away from her, but Yukine's head whips toward her voice. Yato's shoulders jerk, and when he turns around she catches something more than just shock flash in his eyes.

"Hiyori—!"

"What's _happening?!"_ she interrupts, breathing hard. _"_ Did Kofuku go on a rampage?"

"No, she didn't, but that's not important—you shouldn't be here, Hiyori! Go home!"

Even though Yato only sounds concerned, the air in her lungs grows hot. Hiyori doesn't like being told what to do.

"You think after what I've just seen, I'm going to leave? Please, if you really want me to leave you alone, then tell me what all this is about!"

Yato's mouth shuts with a snap. He looks around like he wants to find the quickest escape. But, apparently thinking better of it, he stays right where he is.

"How…how did you even find us?"

Hiyori cocks an eyebrow and points, silently indicating the dissipating pillar of ayakashi, rising like smoke from a signal fire. Yato looks upward, and scratches his neck.

"Oh."

"Yato, if you keep avoiding my questions, I swear, god or no god, I will put the newest dent in your thick skull."

He takes a cautionary step away from her, still scratching the back of his neck. Yukine glances worriedly between the two of them.

"I'm not avoiding—" Yato begins, and the look Hiyori shoots him could melt steel. He swallows, and revises his answer.

"It's not that I was _avoiding_ them. I'll answer any concerns you have, Hiyori. I've just been…a bit busy. You saw!"

"Yes—but that doesn't explain why you haven't told me _anything_ about why these ayakashi are suddenly everywhere you step, or why there are so many storms all over Tokyo. Kofuku did tell me that the growing ayakashi problem was why the heavens held an unscheduled colloquy…but this—"

She flings out an arm toward him. He winces, but realizes she's just gesturing toward the wreckage caused by the vent. He and Yukine cast uneasy looks around, and the view isn't pretty. Debris litters the pavement in front of the subway station, and in the distance, police sirens begin to sing. Miraculously, there don't seem to be any human casualties, but Hiyori sees a few surviving ayakashi—peeking out from the hollow shadows to whisper _nice smell, nice smell_ , looking for their next available victims. She forces back a surge of panic in her stomach.

"This is ridiculous, Yato! In just the last few weeks, the crime rate has tripled. My father comes home from work saying he's seen more injuries from violent attacks than he can ever remember. People are throwing themselves off the tops of buildings, they're stepping into the middle of the highway—Yato, it's like the hospital all over again, but…everywhere."

To Hiyori's unhappiness, her voice grows thin, a little wavery. _Don't cry. Don't._

Yato's shoulders, bunched up tight under his ears, slump down. His entire body seems to tilt slightly toward the earth.

"Okay, fine. You asked."

Hiyori lets out a deep breath—one she hadn't realized she was holding. Yato crosses his arms and looks down, somewhere around her knees.

"You know already about…about my dad being human."

She nods, happy to hear that he's actually going to answer her. She misses the sharp, unsettled look Yukine cuts Yato from where he stands off to the side. Yato says:

"Well, the more he interacts with non-human beings—shinki, like the nora, or even the Masked ayakashi—then the stronger the connection grows between the Near Shore and the Far Shore. I guess you could say he's…pulling all these ayakashi into the world. I wouldn't be surprised if he were doing it on purpose."

She stares at him.

"Why would he _do_ that?"

Yato shrugs.

"I don't pretend to guess what that son of a bitch is thinking most of the time. My best bet is, the more suffering he can cause—on as large a scale as possible—the more he gets off. So let's just leave it at that."

Hiyori cringes at the roughness in his tone, but he's given her enough to think about for the moment to take her off his case. After a few moments of consideration, she says:

"So the colloquy was about…your father? Do the rest of the gods actually know what's going on with that?"

He shakes his head.

"No. _That_ was mostly to develop a contingency plan for if too many vents open, and if the ayakashi situation really gets out of control. They don't see it as being a side effect of any human involvement,"

He smirks, putting his weight on one hip.

"Actually, everyone just got a little panicky—that's all it was. Plus, the fact that so many ayakashi are causing trouble here didn't help with the general attitude in Takama-ga-hara."

Hiyori crosses her arms, mulling over his explanation. While she ponders, she finds herself still unsure why Kofuku was so hesitant to give her answers. As a consequence, she doesn't notice Yato walking toward her. So when he sets his hand, very gently, on her head, she tenses and gives him a startled look.

"Don't worry about this at all, Hiyori," he says. He speaks softly, and smiles at her.

"This really isn't your problem—although I know it's hard to watch things keep going as they are. I promise, we'll take care of it so as to minimize the number of people who get hurt."

Then, he pulls her face into his shoulder, and her cheeks darken completely pink.

"Most of all, please, stay careful. Don't let your spirit fall out of your body more than you can help, okay?"

After a few seconds, she silently nods against him, and brings one of her arms up and under his shoulder to loosely grip the back of his shirt.

"I…I'll try. I'm worried for everyone, though—you, and Yukine, and my other friends and family. My dad—"

His hand on top of her head freezes.

"Is something wrong with your father?"

She pushes away from him a little, reading his immediate mood swing. She also finally sees the hand he's holding away from her, with a small stain of blight above the wrist. Seeing that doesn't make her feel any better. She says:

"Oh, that's right. I meant to tell you that there's an ayakashi hanging onto him. It's just a little one, though."

"Is your dad at your home right now?" Yato asks, his voice strained.

"Yes…but I thought you said—"

He steps away from her, letting his hand fall.

"Yukine, c'mon."

Yukine, standing off to the sidelines during his master's explanation, suddenly reappears at Yato's side. In the nick of time, Hiyori realizes what they're about to do. She launches herself at the two of them before Yato steps between time and space to arrive at the doorstep of her home. She falls inelegantly against Yukine's back as the three of them tumble into the closed door, with Yato bearing the brunt of the load.

" _Oof_ …hey?! Hiyori, why did you—"

She pushes herself off Yukine (he yelps) and scrambles to her feet to face off with Yato.

"Stop trying to leave me behind like that! And you said yourself the other day that those little ayakashi were nothing to worry about! What was I _supposed_ to think?!"

Yato tries to retreat from her indignation, but instead he runs into the wall—and out of luck.

"Well, they usually are, okay? But you didn't mention that an ayakashi had attached itself—I just thought they had wandered into your home by chance!"

"Of course they did! What—are you saying my family's a target for your father's ayakashi again?"

Yato's teeth click together as his jaw tenses. Hiyori threw out the question as a ridiculous possibility, but his lack of a rebuttal turns her chest to ice. At her right, Yukine says nervously:

"No—I don't think Yato's saying that, Hiyori. These are normal ayakashi; they're not possessing anyone. But it's different when an ayakashi feeds off the negative emotions of a single person for too long. You know that. And neither of us wants anything bad to happen to your family again, that's all. Let it go."

Hiyori looks away from Yato—and the muscle that's jumping in his neck—to Yukine, who obviously wants nothing more than to diffuse the uncomfortable atmosphere. Huffing a sigh, she gives a single nod and opens up the door for them, on the lookout for any of her family members who might notice Yato and Yukine sneaking through the premises.

She does want that ayakashi gone, and for her father to be peaceful. But she won't let it go. Not until she gets a real answer.


	16. persistence

"Really though, Hiyori. You have to tell us about something like this _immediately_."

Yato gives her these instructions after quickly dispatching the ayakashi attached to her father. Just to be safe, he had severed Dr. Iki's ties with his patients as well.

Hiyori expresses some concern over this.

"Won't that make his work really difficult?"

Yato just shrugs. But his residual worry courses through his silence and into the air between them. The tension puts Hiyori's teeth on edge.

"If he's less personally attached, he can avoid feeding any more of the bad feelings that gave birth to that ayakashi," he explains quickly, moving on to the next room.

Hiyori doesn't point out that, with the preponderance of storms and vents, the likelihood of something like this happening once again has skyrocketed. Instead, she just accompanies Yato in silence as he walks through the rest of the rooms. He keeps Sekki ready to deal with any more ayakashi they come across, but the rest of the house is empty.

At the last room—her bedroom—he exhales deeply.

"That's it then. Just the one your dad brought home. Nothing wrong with your mother, or brother?"

She shakes her head.

"I haven't noticed anything wrong with my mom. And onii-chan has been out of the city for a couple of days. He'll be gone until next week."

At this information, Yato seems to finally relax. However, despite the fact that Hiyori is happy to see her family ayakashi-free again, she's ready for everything to go back to normal.

Or at least, everything in her _house_ , even if the rest of the city is spiraling into hell.

"Thanks, both of you," she says, indicating Sekki in her gesture of gratitude as well. "I guess…I just didn't realize what this was all about."

 _I still don't._

"And you're sure that this is _all_ that's been out of the ordinary?" Yato asks.

"Yes!" she says, barely concealing her exasperation. Is there any way she can get him to just leave?

No sooner than she's convinced he'll never get out of her house, Yato nods in satisfaction and props Sekki over both shoulders.

"Okay—good. We have to go take care of all these storms, but we'll definitely see you later. _Don't_ leave your body, Hiyori."

"Why…not…?"

The question isn't halfway out of her mouth before Yato is out of earshot: nothing more than a tracksuited blur heading toward the nearest undulating coil of ayakashi.

/

Hiyori doesn't know what she expected when Yato said they would "definitely see her later." But she's pretty sure it wasn't this.

After coming up the stairs from the living room, she notices the light in her bedroom is already on. Briefly entertaining the idea that she may have forgotten to flip the switch, she opens the door to see not one, but two intruders.

Yukine lifts his eyes from the book he's reading in the chair in the corner of her room.

"Oh, hi Hiyori!"

Yato springs upright from where he's been rolling around on her bed.

"Hiyoriiii!"

She stops in the doorway, silently adjusting to the situation, and closes the door very cautiously before opening fire on either of them.

"Do I have to put up a NO TRESPASSING sign on my window?!"

"I'm pretty sure that would have no effect," Yukine says, eyeing the unabashed Yato, who scoots to the edge of her bed to stand up.

Hiyori blushes only slightly when she realizes that her entire bed probably smells like him now.

"We're only here to make sure you're safe," Yato says to her, sounding a little hurt that she would assume otherwise.

Before her mouth can open to form a retort, his back straightens, and he adopts his "I'm-a-god-so-do-what-I-say-or-heed-the-painful-consequences" tone.

"Neither Yukine nor I want to leave you alone all the time, just in case you do become a target. So, when we're not out closing vents, we will stay here with you."

Hiyori sighs.

"Yato…" she begins, but he cuts her off with a dismissive wave, sits back down on her bed, and deliberately crosses his legs.

"Right. _Here._ "

Stymied, she turns and appeals to Yukine.

"Yukine, can you—"

"Yato's right."

The tone he interrupts her with is slightly more belligerent than she's used to hearing from him, and Hiyori flinches.

"Oh—okay then."

She looks at Yukine a bit longer, then turns back to Yato as he sits on the edge of her bed:

"But…if _you're_ both here, then won't the city be kind of overrun with ayakashi?"

Yato yawns, flopping back onto her mattress.

"Bishamon's on patrol during the nights, and Kofuku already let us know where the most dangerous vents will probably open. She's predicted a huge one will appear in the park nearest here, so we're mostly worrying about that one. The rest are just small fry."

There's really nothing Hiyori can do. That is, apart from standing helplessly in the middle of her room, watching as Yukine makes himself comfortable in the corner with one of her books, and Yato flails disastrously on her bed.

"So…that's it?! You've both just decided to move right in?"

"Sounds like a good deal to me," Yato says with a smirk, intentionally smelling one of her pillows. Yukine, red-faced, sinks deeper into the pages.

Hiyori stares mutely between the two of them. She can't exactly force them to leave, and she would be lying if she said that having them nearby didn't make her feel a bit more at ease.

At least, this way, she knows they're both safe too.

She settles herself at the only free piece of furniture—her desk—in resignation.

"So you're really working well with Bishamon these days, huh?" she asks Yato, from where he's half-disappeared among her pillows.

His face pops up again, grimacing.

"Yeah, I can't seem to stop partnering up with that nympho—"

"Yato!" she hisses, glancing over at Yukine, who looks up from his book.

"Don't worry," Yukine says offhandedly. "Yato's said way, _way_ worse around me."

Hiyori turns back to her desk, not sure if that makes her feel any better. She pulls a notebook out of her bag, and tries to ignore the questionable antics of the god on her bed in favor of reviewing for the exams that are racing toward her in less than a week.

Far away, something sounds like thunder.

In the echoes of the distant boom, she hears the cries of ayakashi, and even though Yato and Yukine seem to be ignoring them—she can't. In passing, Hiyori wonders if the unrest in the city is actually changing the weather.

"There are sure a lot of them out there," she murmurs, looking up from the notebook where her pen has stalled for the last few minutes.

"Yeah," Yato says absently, holding up one of her stuffed animals and moving the legs to make it look like it's dancing. "But Bishamon should be fine for the time being."

Hiyori stares back at the lamplit page in front of her. The letters tumble and flow together, a nonsense river of ink that bends its jagged borders around the gaps in what neither Yato nor Yukine are telling her.

 _Why is it only Bishamon? Why is there not an army of heaven standing sentinel at every vent?_

"Yato. Are you and Bishamon the only two gods who are fighting ayakashi?"

There's silence from her bed, then rustling. Across the room, in the chair, Yukine coughs.

"Why would you think that?" Yato asks.

"Because of what you just said. You said, 'Bishamon should be fine,' but why would you make that point unless she was all alone? And—and earlier, when you said she was on patrol at night…"

Her head swivels sharply to look at Yato. He sits cross-legged on her bed, facing her, and the gaze he meets her with is unblinking.

"You sound a little paranoid, Hiyori," he says, quietly. "Of course we're not the only ones who are being sent to deal with ayakashi."

"Who else?"

Yato blinks, like he doesn't understand the question.

"Who _else?"_ she repeats, dangerously.

"I'm not—" he clears his throat, "—I'm not…completely sure. There are a lot of gods, after all."

"So you're saying that out of all those gods at the colloquy, you don't remember _one_ of them who volunteered."

"The colloquy is anonymous."

"In that case, you wouldn't know about Bishamon's involvement either."

"Hiyori, please. You're overthinking this."

She takes a few hard breaths through her nose. She's not sure where her desperate insistence is coming from, but it refuses to be ignored. Instead of responding to Yato, she looks over at Yukine, easily reading the discomfort and stiffness of his posture. Even though his eyes are fixed on the book in front of him, he hasn't turned a single page for the last few minutes.

"Something on your mind, Yukine?"

He jumps at her voice, shaking his head vigorously.

"Nope! Nothing at all!"

Hiyori pushes her chair back from the desk, marches over to him, and plants both hands on her hips. Her shadow looms across the pages of his book, and Yukine shrinks into the recesses of the chair.

"Are you _sure_?"

"Uh. Yato?" Yukine says, his voice cracking. "She's very scary."

"You think I don't know that?" Yato says, unhelpfully.

Then, reluctantly sliding off the bed, he comes over to shield Yukine from any potential bodily harm Hiyori might inflict on him.

"You know that by making my shinki nervous, you're making me nervous too, right?"

"Good," she replies at once, shooting him a look. "Because I think there's something you still haven't told me, and you're keeping Yukine from saying anything about it."

Because the air between herself and Yato turns cold and electric, and because Yukine can't seem to stop his panicked gaze from flickering between the two of them, Hiyori guesses that her words are more accurate than she'd like.

"Don't be silly, Hiyori," Yato says, in a calm, reasonable tone—which convinces her he's lying through his teeth. "What would we keep from you?"

Hiyori stares at him in silence. Except for a slight flaring of the nostrils, Yato doesn't look upset. And—apart from her bone-deep certainty that there's something _very_ important she doesn't know—there's no real accusation behind her emotion. So, for the moment, she has to admit defeat.

It's a very good thing she already has an idea to whom she can appeal for an honest explanation.

/

Yato takes it upon himself to read his own self-published hymnbook to her and Yukine that night, but he falls sound asleep in the middle of the fifth page. Hiyori slips the book out of his hands and sets it on the nightstand.

Yato is completely knocked out, mouth wide open and snoring as he drapes over her pillows. Despite the peaceful expression on his face, Hiyori finds the shadows carved in gray half-moons under his eyes. He looks exhausted, and older than she's ever seen him.

She feels a pang of guilt at how much he's probably been hiding his worry—not just from her, but most likely from Yukine as well. Even though he's sprawled over most of her bed, leaving very little room for her body, she can't bring herself to wake him up. Sighing, with one hand on the lamp switch, she looks across the room to where Yukine has already curled up in the chair and drifted off. She had offered him the guest room, but was unsurprised when he asked if he could just stay in here with them. Leaving the light on, Hiyori carefully crawls into the small space between Yato and the wall.

For the rest of the night, she pretends to sleep. The first few times she starts to dream, the wails of the ayakashi seem to encroach close around the house, right up to her bedroom window. As soon as her eyes snap open again, the mutterings and moans cease abruptly. The third time this happens, she decides it's more restful to just stay awake. As soon as daybreak arrives, she keeps her eyes shut, and hears Yato and Yukine quietly depart through her window into the already warm, muggy morning.

Existing only for the end of the school day, Hiyori doesn't make eye contact with the ayakashi in the streets, or with those on the outskirts of school property. The morning and midday classes pass so much more slowly than usual—although that might just be the effect of the slug-like, tar-colored spirit in the corner of the classroom, moaning, _so tired…sooo tiiiired._

Her classmates are affected by it, to the point that a few of them start snoring right at their desks. Even the teacher has a hard time getting through the talking points for the test review. Remembering what Yato told her about staying in her body, Hiyori fights to stay awake.

There are no other ayakashi near the school when she leaves. High above her head, a few of them flock to a storm that's twisting several blocks away. She estimates that's where the nearest vent is. As she makes her way through the city, Hiyori avoids looking at the phantoms flickering their way across the subway lights, and the ones who crouch underneath the ticket machines and inside the air vents.

 _Nice smell._

She hurries out of the subway and toward her destination. It doesn't take her long to arrive.

"Hiyori!"

Mayu is the first of Tenjin's shinki to see her as she walks into the shrine grounds. Hiyori returns the greeting, glancing around self-consciously.

"What brings you here? Is Yato with you?" Mayu asks. Her nose is already wrinkling in anticipation of his arrival.

Hiyori just smiles, and doesn't mention that she's come alone. Instead, she says:

"I would like to speak with your master, if possible. I have a sort of…big request."

Mayu's eyebrows go up, and she casts an uncertain glance behind her. Hiyori braces herself to be sent away. However, a voice from the interior of the shrine speaks.

"It's acceptable to let her in, Mayu. I am curious to hear about this 'big request'."

Tenjin walks toward them, accompanied at a respectful distance by Tsuyu. A few of the other shinki, appearing from shaded corners of the shrine, congregate nearer in mild curiosity.

"Especially," Tenjin adds, smiling slightly, "since I thought you, Iki Hiyori, were Yato's exclusive devotee. Is it safe to assume you came here in the hopes that I can grant you something you cannot—or will not—ask of him?"

Hiyori sets her teeth. There's no use beating around the bush.

"Lord Tenjin, I want to know what that colloquy was about," she says.

The ripple of authority in her voice surprises her, and her blunt demand causes waves of whispers among Tenjin's shinki. The god's eyebrows lift, and Tsuyu's serious gaze cuts between her master and Hiyori. A few of the others cast filthy looks in the human girl's direction, her brazenness offending them by proxy. However, Tenjin seems almost amused.

"Forthright curiosity, and a passionate desire for knowledge. I can respect these attributes, child."

Hiyori lets out a deep breath she didn't know she had been holding.

"Does that mean you will answer me, honestly and fully? I don't—I don't think there's anyone else who will."

He still smiles, but his eyes pass over her, appraising. Hiyori gets the sense she's being X-rayed.

"For a price, yes."

Her heart sinks, but Tenjin continues:

"Let us say the answer to your question will cost you…how much does Yato charge these days?"

Hiyori looks up in surprise, answering:

"Five yen."

"That should do it," Tenjin says in satisfaction, and the whispers among his shinki redouble. _Just five yen in exchange for the secrets of a gods' colloquy?_

"R-really?" Hiyori asks, her voice squeaking.

"Do you want to hear the truth, or not?"

It only takes her a second to answer, and another to fish a five-yen coin out of her purse.

"I do. I really do."


	17. questions

That night, as Yukine dozes off in the corner, Yato reads aloud to her, just like he has many times in the past. But Hiyori can't float away on his voice like she did that first time, and nearly every night following. Ever since her visit to Tenjin's shrine that afternoon, she's masked the clutter of her thoughts, ignoring the headache that pushes on the inside of her temples. It's taken all she can muster to hide any difference in her behavior from the two of them.

Yato arrived at her house close to midnight, covered in bruises, blight still steaming off his skin from where he'd thrown water over it. He and Yukine were both nearly incoherent from exhaustion. Still, Yato demands to keep guard over her. Still, both of them refuse to admit that the strain is just too much. Hiyori wonders how they could have expected her to put her suspicions aside so easily.

Before long, Yato's voice slows down, the words thicken and slur on his tongue, and once again, he falls asleep completely. Hiyori isn't surprised that she's still wide awake. She looks up at him, where he sits slouched at the top of her bed, the book sitting in slack hands on his lap.

She sits upright, her attention lost in the lift and fall of Yato's slow breathing. Across the room, Yukine has fallen asleep in his chair again, his shirt collar pulled up high and over his chin. Hiyori slides to the bottom of her bed, without disturbing Yato, and takes the throw blanket from the foot. She carries it over to Yukine and drapes it over him, softly, listening to the quiet, reassuring puff of his breath.

Her heart squeezes tight, and prickles of heat rush into her eyes.

/

 _"Do you know why ayakashi plague the Near Shore so much more these days than they used to?" Tenjin asks her, once she hands him her five yen. The two of them sit down on a bench in the shrine's courtyard, under the shadow of the plum tree's branches. Hiyori, expecting to hear something about the colloquy itself, looks up at him in surprise._

 _"More vents are opening, right? That's what Kofuku told me. She also said she was called to the colloquy so she could predict the location and size of the biggest ones."_

 _Tenjin smiles, and when he does he looks like he could be someone's genial grandfather._

 _"So the binbōgami_ did _tell you a little of the truth. That is correct. And did she say why?"_

 _Hiyori shakes her head._

 _"No—but then, Yato told me it had something to do with_ him _. Something—something about—"_

 _His father. She hesitates, not wanting to speak too much about affairs that aren't hers. Tenjin chuckles._

 _"Ah, did he really give you an explanation? Interesting. Maybe I should just let you play along with whatever story Yato has already fed you."_

 _Hiyori's tongue is suddenly heavy._

 _"Play along…?"_

 _"I have to admit, I was wondering how he kept this from you. You don't seem like the type to be content with kind lies."_

 _Tenjin twirls his fingers, holds the coin up to the light, and chuckles again, privately._

 _"Obviously not."_

 _Pocketing the coin, he folds his hands on his knees and clears his throat. Considering that he's the god of scholars, Hiyori finds it fitting that she feels like she's about to get a history lesson. Tenjin begins to talk, his voice modulating like he's reciting a lecture, and she preemptively suppresses a yawn._

 _"At one time, the borders between the two worlds were strictly policed, and guarded by the gods—such gods even as Yato. With every ayakashi slain, with every request granted, the lines between human and god were always clearly demarcated. In this way, ayakashi had space to roam. In this way, the Near and Far Shores could coexist in peace. It has always been this way: for the humans to forget, and for us to remember. Now, such is not the truth."_

 _Tenjin pauses—quite possibly for effect—and Hiyori nods, hoping he'll come around to some kind of point eventually. He "hmphs" in satisfaction, and continues._

 _"The Near Shore and the Far Shore are much, much closer than they have been for millennia. Ayakashi are now pouring across the narrow gap—from the in-between space where they reside—and into your world. These many new vents have been pressure valves, breaking open under the weight of the spirits' outflow. This has not been without an effect on the world of the gods, as I'm sure you know. After thousands of eons of coexistence, why do you think this is happening?"_

 _He pins her quite suddenly with his sharp stare, and Hiyori gets the misplaced feeling that she's being pop-quizzed._

 _"I'm not sure…"_

 _But he has said that humans should forget, and gods remember. She trails off, working it through internally. Tenjin keeps silent, waiting for her to understand._

 _"Do you mean…you mean that by not forgetting Yato,_ I'm _somehow making these new vents keep opening up?" she asks._

 _Tenjin looks down at her, and for a moment his eyes are sympathetic. Hiyori feels a cold prickle of fear across her neck, and she almost wishes she could take her five yen back._

 _"Think of it this way, girl. There is a river parting the two worlds: the one in which humans dwell, and the one to which Yato belongs. You, however, stand in the middle of the bridge—evidence that, despite the old rules, there can be an existence that is not quite god or shinki, and not quite human. You are not one of us, Iki Hiyori, and you are not like your human friends either. No one knows quite what to do with you. Surely you know that you are not the only person capable of seeing Far Shore beings—there have always been those who are more attuned to our presence. However, none of these humans have crossed over as far as you; none are half-ayakashi themselves. With the proximity between the two Shores constantly shrinking, it will only be a matter of time before someone else follows your example, someone else who disregards their own mortality on behalf of a Far Shore dweller. Clearly, your influence has not been as limited as you think."_

 _Hiyori feels her stomach clench, and she leans back, a little dizzy. Tenjin keeps speaking._

 _"You have noticed, of course, the ayakashi swarming the city. You have heard of their effects: the rising rates of crime, suicide, and illness. You have witnessed how many times Yato and Bishamon must fight to quell their numbers and close the vents. People like you, Hiyori, have the potential to shorten the bridge between the Near and Far Shores, but there is more than water raging in the river. The beasts under its surface, the phantoms themselves, have nowhere left to go."_

 _"So that's why you wanted Yato to cut my ties with him? To prevent this 'river' from overflowing into the human world?" she quickly asks._

 _Tenjin smiles again, but this time, not reassuringly._

 _"No, that was for your sake alone. I wanted him to sever your connection to give you a normal human life, Hiyori. Now, I see, that was probably never a possibility. You are too far in between the worlds to step fully back into yours now. Do you see the dilemma here?"_

 _Hiyori does. And, according to the way Tenjin explains it, the one thing she thought might help—severing her connection with Yato—would only prove useless._

 _"Can't I do anything?" she asks, half in fear of his answer._

 _Tenjin looks toward the branches of the plum tree, and she follows his gaze. The sky is hot, glassy blue, and even from here she can see four massive winged ayakashi sliding across it, like ducks on the surface of an otherworldly pond._

 _"You are asking me to speculate, little human girl," Tenjin says. "My answer may be wrong—or you just might not like it."_

 _She swallows, hard. Five yen, and in exchange she might learn how to not be useless. Five yen in exchange for everything she loves._

 _"Just tell me."_

 _/_

Hiyori pads, barefooted, over to the window after tucking Yukine into the chair. It's well after midnight, and the ivory of moonlight is scarred with the opaque, clustered shapes of roaming ayakashi. The night would be completely silent, were it not for the distant moaning of those same spirits. No matter how many are destroyed, their cries cover the city. Bishamon must be hard at work, slicing the night to ribbons with her great sword and keen whip.

Meanwhile, Hiyori understands that Yato and Yukine are stuck here. All because of her.

/

 _"Iki Hiyori, the ripples you have caused in the river were the reason for this colloquy. The heavens are watching you, wondering if your life is enough to bring an end to the turmoil on both Shores. And since you stand firmly in the middle of the bridge, there is now not enough space for you on either bank."_

 _"What does that mean?" she asks._

 _Tenjin takes the coin out of his pocket and lays it on his knee, where it catches the plum-colored, early evening light._

 _"It means there is nowhere for you to go, but into the water."_

 _/_

Hiyori stares out the window, unseeing. She can't wrap her mind around Tenjin's words, but they echo as deep as her cells—an implosion on an invisible scale.

She's never envisioned this situation: deliberately weighing her desire to cling to her humanity against the cost otherwise. Every fiber of herself says _it's wrong, it's impossible, there must be something else._

But, these odds. These odds suggest that the worth of her small life may have an unprecedented exchange rate. Hiyori stares out the window, and thinks that, maybe, when Yato took her request, she sold her future to him for the price of five yen.

Then, she realizes how wrong she is—their fates were intertwined long before her ayakashi-half separated from her body.

/

 _The bottom of her stomach seems to drop out, and Hiyori stares, uncomprehending._

 _"But—but Yato wouldn't—he would have—"_

 _"Yes, he is always the complication," Tenjin admits, sounding fairly annoyed about it._

 _"There could be no open discussion at the colloquy with him present—the heavens knowing, as they do, that he is…difficult to keep in check. The implication was oblique, but present. Mostly, the talk was whether to make much of these quickly opening vents. He and Bishamon spoke out against heaven's complacency."_

 _She can't believe it, she doesn't want to believe it. And yet, it makes sense. The storms, the secrecy—Yato keeping her within sight, and always hedging as to why. He's always relied so much on himself, and with him and Bishamon fighting together, it's hard to believe they're anything but unstoppable._

 _They have been protecting her. Yato and Yukine—even Kofuku, Daikoku, and Bishamon—have all tried to shield her from something that she might see as her fault. Because, really, what could she ever do to help? She can't fight ayakashi; she can't even succeed in keeping herself inside her own body._

 _Then, something Tenjin has said clicks with her._

 _"Why_ won't _the heavens act? Don't the gods have anyone else they can send to fight ayakashi and to seal the vents? You said it yourself—everything that goes on here is equally present in the heavens as well."_

 _Tenjin sighs._

 _"Bishamon and Yato are in a losing battle. They can't fight their way out of this; they know it, but they keep thinking that with enough effort, they can punch their way through any obstacle. It is the way of gods of war and gods of calamity."_

 _He rubs his temples, apparently resigning himself to Yato and Bishamon's foolishness._

 _"The fact is: everything_ will _return to the way it was, one way or another. In the process, this city will most likely tear itself to pieces. Things will have to get a lot worse before they can get better—however, that doesn't change the fact that this isn't really an issue of divine politics, or succession, or sorcery. The earth is just trying to rid itself of something that should not be, like a human body trying to kill a virus—and I am sorry, child, but in this case, that virus is you."_

 _Hiyori starts to lose track of his metaphors. Rivers, bridges, viruses…the message builds itself around a central theme. She—the small, insignificant half-ayakashi girl—has somehow been the cause of all this trouble._

 _/_

If she believes in fate, would what she's gotten so far outweigh the price of a future with them?

She looks back at Yato, at the book rising and dropping on his chest, and the black fringe of his eyelashes on unwrinkled skin. She looks at Yukine, who rubs his nose in his sleep and mutters, kicking half the blanket off of himself. Her lips curve up in a trembling half-smile, and when she touches her own face, her fingertips wipe wetness across her cheek.

Muffling her sniffs on the sleeve of her nightshirt, Hiyori cries. She cries for a long time, and without entirely knowing why.

She still wants all of this. It hasn't been enough. It hasn't been nearly enough.

/

 _"In your vicinity there is less distance between the Shores," Tenjin continues. For five yen, he's really become talkative, and even though Hiyori knows everything he says is important, it's hard to pay attention when he's pouring so much information on top of her._

 _"The heavens don't see the point in dispatching an army to close a hundred vents that will simply reopen, especially if their cause is so insignificant. Like waiting for an ant to find its way to the poison…one little human is not enough to invoke the wrath of the high sentinels. They simply don't see you as important enough."_

 _Hiyori has fallen silent; she stares at her hands, white-knuckled fingers gripping her knees. She would be tempted to think Tenjin's words cruel, if she weren't feeling the awful, concrete truth of them._

 _"So what am I supposed to actually do? Am I expected to just…die?"_

 _The question is mechanical, and grates like sandpaper over her tongue._

 _"Oh, I don't think it's that simple. How can you die, when your spirit is already so restless? No, Hiyori, I don't think your death is the answer. Like I said: no one really knows what to do with you—least of all Yato. I don't think he's really accepted the possibility that he can't battle through everything he faces. You, on the other hand…"_

 _Tenjin refolds his hands, and there's a trace of grudging admiration in his voice._

 _"You've been a surprise from the start, little human girl. I have to admit, I was astonished when you refused to let your ties with Yato be cut. You've accomplished for a long time what most humans cannot, and straddled the divide between our world and your own. Perhaps you will shock us all again."_

 _It is this allowance, skeptical though it is, that puts steel in her voice. Hiyori has one last question._

 _"And what about you, Lord Tenjin? You don't seem all that worried about what will happen if, as you say, the river 'floods,' even if the death toll is high. You sided with heaven, didn't you?"_

 _Tenjin's eyes widen, and he gives a dry chuckle before answering._

 _"The only gods who expressed discontent with the colloquy's outcome were Yato and Bishamon, and a few stragglers worried that their tiny following might vanish among the casualties. The rest held their peace. As for myself, I won't say that I strictly agreed with the meeting's results—but I'm certainly not going to oppose them. You ask a very impertinent question."_

 _"One you're not answering."_

 _Hiyori's tone is sharp, and across the courtyard, Tenjin's other shinki look askance. She ignores them._

 _"Yato and Bishamon are at least fighting for what they think is right. You don't seem to be doing anything."_

 _Tenjin gives her that X-ray stare once more, and a finger of ice crawls up her spine._

 _She's an ant being lured to poison._

 _"I would disagree, little girl. I have done all that I need to."_


	18. realization

Hiyori wakes up the next morning trying to unravel herself from chaotic dreams.

The first thing she notices is the air—it sits heavily still, uncomfortably still. It is air that waits.

Yato and Yukine have already left, as usual, but this morning she finds a note from Yukine on her desk.

 _Hey, Hiyori! It's probably a good idea for you to go right back home after school today. There's a possibility that a few more ayakashi than usual will be roaming, so try and stay away from any storms as much as you can, okay? Still, if something—especially something in your house—looks at all off, PLEASE CALL._

 _See you tonight! - Yukine_

 _P.S. I kept Yato from leaving about 300 kissy-faces on this note. You're welcome._

Hiyori holds the note in her hand for a little longer than it takes her to read it, then stuffs it in her pocket.

Her eyes are hot, but dry. If she's learned anything from her conversation with Tenjin, it's that people have already been putting themselves in too much danger on her behalf. And if there's really nothing she can do to help, the least she can offer is her continued faith in them.

So no, she won't let Tenjin intimidate her—nor any of the rest of them, for that matter. It'll take more than a city full of ayakashi and a few dusty gods to make her lose her nerve.

Besides, whatever Tenjin may have meant by his words yesterday, Hiyori cannot leave those two alone. She made a promise to keep faith in them, because Yukine leans on her—because Yato loves her. She can't succumb to feeling useless. She can't let this become a story of her weakness, of her failure.

Squaring her shoulders, Hiyori goes down the stairs, enters the kitchen, and—like it's her own personal battleground—prepares to eat breakfast with her family.

/

"Do you think Hiyori's going to try and find us?" Yukine asks tentatively, watching Yato fill a few plastic bottles with purified water.

"You said not to in the note you left for her, right?"

Yato twists the caps on firmly, slipping the bottles in the inner pockets of his tracksuit. Yukine shifts his weight between his feet.

"Well, obviously, but c'mon. Don't you think leaving that for her is just going to make her more anxious?"

Yato turns on his heel and pushes air out impatiently between his teeth.

"Are you gonna be worrying the whole time, or will you be able to focus?"

Yukine shoots him a quick glance, then looks down.

"I'll be fine."

/

The air in the room feels heavier as soon as Hiyori sets her foot over the threshold.

 ** _Come._**

She freezes. Her heart thrums in her ribs like a trapped fly.

 ** _Come with us. You belong with us._**

/

The park is empty when they arrive. Eerily empty.

Despite the preternatural stillness, they're only a block or so away from a busy road. Yukine casts a concerned glance over his shoulder at the bustling downtown area that, even from here, is riddled with ayakashi. However, the park is free of all activity—both human and phantom. Everyone seems to be unconsciously skirting the manicured wilderness that is usually home to at least a few joggers, if no one else.

"Hey," says Yato, grabbing his attention. He points over in the direction of the nearest path.

Yukine follows the line indicated by his finger, to the only other person visible in the park besides them.

"That's a little creepy," Yato says.

The woman, about in her mid-thirties, is unsuccessfully trying to walk her dog along one of the gently curving footpaths that weaves through the park. The dog whines, tugging at his leash in distress and pulling his owner toward the edge of the park property. The animal fights the collar, nearly choking itself in its strain to leave.

The woman, in utter consternation, finally allows herself to be dragged away from the park and toward the more populated area of the city. She doesn't look at Yato or Yukine.

"There don't even seem to be any ayakashi in this park," Yato says. "But that dog was acting like he was almost _eager_ to get back to where the rest of them are."

Deep in his pockets, Yukine's fists tighten.

"What the hell…"

He doesn't whisper it in confusion—but rather because _he_ can feel it too. Whatever the dog was so afraid of, Yukine feels the same anxiety, the same crawling unease as deep as his bones.

"I guess Kofuku was right," Yato says, and calls for Sekki.

/

"Hiyori, come get some breakfast," her father says, beckoning her over to the table.

In the chair immediately next to him sits a phantom, its skeletal mouth stretched open and dripping.

Hiyori realizes with a sickening jolt, that it's _her._ Her own features, distorted and cavernous, grin back at her from the breakfast table. The creature crooks its long, rotting finger. **_Come._**

/

In his shinki form, Yukine's anxiety travels wordlessly up the hilt and through Yato.

"What is it?" Yato asks, looking down at his weapon in concern.

 _You can't feel it?_

"Feel what?"

 _The air. It's too…_

He searches for the right word.

 _Alive._

/

"Is something wrong?" Dr. Iki asks, noticing Hiyori's stricken expression.

She looks from him to her mother, whom she knows can sense the presence sharing their table. But Mrs. Iki is just pouring tea with shaking hands, her eyes not straying an inch from the cup.

"No. I'm just a little tired," Hiyori says, shuffling to a seat at the head of the table, farthest from the spirit.

As soon as she sits down, a wave of exhaustion hits her. The strength of the ayakashi's presence is trying to force her soul out of her body, and Hiyori fights it, gritting her teeth.

"Maybe you need to get to sleep earlier," her mother says, her voice admirably steady. But a drop of tea spills over the lip of the cup as she pours it for Hiyori.

"You're right. I probably do."

Her limbs are impossibly, icily heavy. She peels her eyelids all the way open and stares, unseeing, at her empty plate. Her father asks her something.

But she doesn't hear it, because the ayakashi speaks.

 ** _Just sleep, and come along with us._**

Hiyori's shoulders stiffen.

 ** _You realized already, didn't you? It's the only way._**

Tenjin's words suddenly clang at the front of her mind, a chorus of alarm bells:

 _How can you die, when your spirit is already so restless? No, Hiyori, I don't think your death is the answer._

Her fingers clutch the edge of the table as the room spins, and Hiyori finds it suddenly hard to breathe. Her father looks up at her, attentively.

"What was that, Hiyori?"

She takes a moment to gather herself. When she answers, her voice is strangely calm.

"I'm sorry. I'm not actually hungry. I think—I think I'm late for class."

She carefully pushes her chair back from the table and returns to her room to get her school things. She doesn't see it, but she knows what follows her out of the room. Its slow, measured footsteps approach in the direction from the kitchen's entrance. When those footsteps stop right outside her bedroom, her skin crawls with its silent, waiting presence in the hallway.

A few minutes later, Hiyori leaves her dumbstruck parents sitting right where she's left them. With the same deliberate, plodding footsteps, the ayakashi follows her out of her house.

Even though it's much slower than her, and she leaves it blocks behind, Hiyori still hears it.

 ** _Come with us._**

/

A bulky silhouette appears over the farthest trees. A few seconds later, Kuraha lands next to them, and along with him is Bishamon, armed to the teeth.

"Not tired yet, Yato?"

He scoffs, throwing his chest out.

"Far from it. But _you_ must be, all weighed down like that."

The hand on Sekki's hilt tightens.

"Lucky for me, I don't need an army of shinki."

Bishamon dismounts, baring her teeth at him, but it's more of a fierce smile than a scowl.

Yukine has learned over the past few days: the two gods' personalities clash like water and oil, but they work together flawlessly. A century of enmity has forged in its crucible a partnership where both are fully aware of each others' weaknesses and strengths. Another thing he's learned: they always trade barbs before teaming up.

It's the weirdest form of friendship he's ever seen.

Before Bishamon can hurl an insult back at Yato, the atmosphere changes. The tension in the warm air ripples in arcs that are almost visible, and Yukine feels it hum along his blade like electricity.

 _What's happening now?_ he asks.

Yato's stance shifts.

"We get ready."

/

"I'm awake. I'm awake. I'm awake," Hiyori repeats to herself, making it stay true until she arrives at school half an hour early. The classroom is clear of ayakashi when she arrives—at least Yato and Yukine could provide that much—but in a few minutes, gloom seeps under the windows. Hiyori knows the taste of it; the single ayakashi arrives soon after, lingering at the doorway. The disturbing, bone-white mask of her own face makes Hiyori's stomach turn.

But it doesn't speak any more. It only stares, silently.

Soon, the teacher and the rest of the students arrive. They, of course, cannot see the invisible intruder in the classroom, but once class starts, concentration is impossible. Tendrils of panic seep out from the shrouded phantom and into the ears of Hiyori's classmates. The girl sitting in front of her puts her head down on her desk and begins to shake, her fists clenching and unclenching on the flat surface.

Hiyori suddenly understands what the creature is doing; until she stops ignoring it, it will simply torment the people around her.

As soon as she realizes this, the ayakashi at the door speaks again. Its voice is clear—pleasant, even—but Hiyori doesn't seem to hear it with her ears. It's like the ayakashi is speaking directly into her head.

This cannot be a good thing.

 ** _Don't fight, Hiyori. Just come._**

"No," she whispers. Everyone else is too preoccupied to notice her lips moving.

 ** _You'll do it eventually. Why not now?_**

"You will _not_ win against me."

 ** _What are you trying to accomplish? Your family will die if you keep this up. Your father will probably kill himself. Your friends will fall victim to the gloom and probably do the same. Your mother can sense us, but she pretends not to. She is afraid. They are all afraid. You are the reason they are so afraid._**

"I'm not. I'm _not_! I can't…I can't afford to think that way."

 ** _Why not? Why pretend you're so selfless when all you do is sit around, watching?_**

Hiyori clenches her fists so tightly that the nails break the skin. She doesn't answer.

 ** _Just a little over a year ago, you were ready to push someone out of the way of a bus. What's so different about this? You'll save everyone. You're useless otherwise._**

Tears of frustration well up behind her eyes.

"Do _what?_ What do you want from me?!"

The ayakashi pauses a second before answering.

 ** _Don't play stupid. I wouldn't be here if you didn't already know._**

Hiyori's breath hisses out through her teeth.

"But…if I do, then Yato will…"

She trails off. She doesn't need to finish.

The ayakashi laughs: a moist, grotesque cackle that curls like a tongue inside her ear.

 ** _You really think Yato's existence depends on you being there to believe in him? Maybe you weren't just playing stupid. You aren't strong enough to keep him alive by yourself. Besides, he is old…as old as memory. As old as calamity. He will survive, and he will forget about you. Isn't that funny—to be the one forgotten?_**

Hiyori closes her eyes.

"You're just my fear talking."

 ** _Fear is sometimes correct. And if you're really worried about Yato or Yukine, you'll come. They can survive losing you, but they can't survive what will happen if the city destroys itself. Even Yato's human sorcerer can't protect him from that. He and Bishamon will both perish, but she, at least, can reincarnate._**

Hiyori's eyes shoot wide open. That had never even crossed her mind.

 ** _Yato and Yukine will be dead, because of you. Bishamon will have to reincarnate, and her best shinki will be lost, because of you. Everyone will suffer, the city will face disaster—all because of you._**

A sudden, blinding headache plunges a knife between her temples. Hiyori's not sure how much longer she can keep her body from rejecting her soul, especially with the ayakashi's taunts squirming, snakelike, into all the narrow spaces of her skull.

 ** _So. Will you come?_**

"I'm not listening to you," she hisses at the shape in the doorway, and picks up her book bag.

The voice in her head rings with victory.

 ** _Then why are you still talking?_**

/

First, the ground splits open like rotten ice. Down and down it falls, caving in on trees, benches, landmarks—all swallowed up in the abyss that roars open like the mouth of a chthonic dragon.

There's a moment of airless, thrumming silence.

 _Yato—!_ Yukine shouts.

But he's already jumped back. The vent screams open, unleashing a volcanic spout of ayakashi that climbs to skyscraper height. Pebbles, debris, and chunks of turf rain down from the explosion.

Yato and Bishamon regain their footing on the quaking sidewalk, just a few meters past the perimeter of the crater. They both lean forward against the wall of hot, ash-black wind, where seconds before there had once been a quiet park.

"Holy hell."

"How could they let something like this happen?!" Bishamon spits, looking mad enough to declare war on heaven all by herself.

"No time to worry about that," Yato says.

He sidesteps an enormous, two-headed spirit that screams its way past him, and slices it clean without a backward glance.

"We have to make sure this vent gets closed. Somehow."

As the seemingly endless ayakashi rain from the sky, something very unpleasant occurs to Yukine.

If the earth is a vast organism, this would be a fatal wound. The ayakashi and the geyser of putrid gases has burst like a broken artery. All this time, the world has been ripping itself apart from the inside, and they keep trying to suture it back together, however temporarily.

He tries not to let himself think that this time, the stitches might not hold.

/

"Are you feeling ill?" the teacher asks as Hiyori slings her bag over her shoulder and walks quickly toward the exit doorway.

"Yes, I'd like to visit the infirmary."

It's not a lie. Her head is pounding so hard she can barely speak.

Her teacher looks at her, his vision obscured through the haze of ayakashi gloom in the classroom.

"Very well," he says, tonelessly, and Hiyori makes her quick escape. She doesn't look at the creature wearing her face.

 _I'm not listening_ , she shoots at it, silently. But it's hard to not listen to her fear when it has the upper hand.

 ** _If you don't believe me, then just look outside. Better yet, go to the park. He's there now, with the other war god…but it doesn't look good._**

Hiyori's muscles lock up a few steps outside the classroom doorway. Hadn't Yato mentioned something about a vent in the park? Kofuku had predicted that it would be large.

Then, the earth under her feet rolls like a ship in a storm. Plaster trickles from the ceiling, dusting her skin and hair chalky white. Dimly, distantly, Hiyori hears screams from inside the classroom. A dozen more ayakashi pop into existence, born from her friends' panic.

 ** _You'd better hurry._**

Hiyori, already flying down the hall, listens to her fear.

She doesn't stop running once she passes the perimeter of the school grounds, at any moment expecting another earthquake to split the asphalt, but once she reaches the crowded downtown area she has to slow her steps. Everyone she passes on the street is wide-eyed, fear-stricken—everyone, that is, except for those with ayakashi clinging to their loose skin, whispering into their thoughts.

Those people have eyes that make her shiver, like the ones in the face of her ayakashi double.

She gives every phantom she sees a wide berth, trying to avoid the heaviness of her body, the lightness of her soul lifting out of it. She clings to the inside of her skin with everything she can muster. Once the crowd thins, she starts running again.

"Why are you running, girl?" a strange man shouts at her from across the street.

Her feet skid to a stop, and she looks over at him. The man is no one she's seen before, and just as she begins to think he might have been calling to someone else, he points straight to her.

She is incapable of moving as she watches the man cross the street, ignoring two cars that screech to avoid hitting him. They stomp on their brakes and honk, but he never takes his eyes off her. Only when he's crossed all the way over—when he's standing right in front of her—does he lower his finger from its gesture of accusation.

"Why were you running away? Don't be frightened."

There are hundreds more pedestrians on the street, but in that moment it is just her, alone with the strange man.

He reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a letter opener. Hiyori looks into his eyes. Dead.

He lifts the hand holding the letter opener, with strange, puppet-like jerkiness, and the ayakashi looped around his right arm cackles.

"There's nothing to be frightened of," the man says, quietly.

"Wait—!" Hiyori cries.

He pushes the letter opener through the side of his neck.

Hiyori watches in speechless horror as blood hemorrhages from around the blade and the man falls, twitching, to the sidewalk, bubbles of dark red popping at the corners of his mouth.

A beat of silence; she looks down at the strange man as he gurgles at her feet. Then, she hears other voices.

"What the hell—? Oh my _god_."

"Someone call for help!"

"I'm going to be sick…"

She hears the distant, agonized voices as though through a fathom of water. The man bleeds out in front of her, slippery fingers clenched around the soaked handle of the letter opener. The ayakashi uncurls itself from his arm, into the pool of red that expands with each weakening heartbeat.

 ** _Come._**


	19. selfish

Hiyori walks the rest of the way. She doesn't go to the park, like the ayakashi told her, but rather she turns her steps toward the hospital.

She isn't sure if the blurriness at the edges of her vision is an effect of unshed tears, or from unconsciousness closing in on her. She eventually decides that it's neither.

She walks through the wide glass doors of the hospital and aims for the administrator's office. When she gets there, he's in a meeting. He's been in a lot of meetings ever since Yato's father targeted her family. Even from down the hallway, Hiyori sees a dense cloud of malcontent and mistrust spilling out of the room like boiling oil. This ayakashi is incorporeal, but just as dangerous as the rest. Perhaps more so.

 _Your father will kill himself._ It's what her own mouth has already told her.

She peers through the cloudy doorway, still standing far back from the ayakashi. But, even from here, its energy makes her spirit vibrate restlessly within her skin. Her father is talking to three other men. She recognizes one of them as a lawyer for the hospital.

None of them look happy.

The angry cloud mutters: _terrible things, terrible things. Terrible world. So much disaster, and you can't do anything to help. So much for running a hospital. You can't help anyone. Terrible things._

The men inside wave their hands, and her father rubs his temples. His posture is listless, muscles hanging limp on his skeleton like he's not used to bearing the weight of himself.

Hiyori guesses he didn't even feel the earthquake.

When she walks through the front door of her house a short while later, she feels like she's entering the home of a stranger. She goes straight to the kitchen, where she hears the neat click of metal against wood.

"Hiyori!" her mother says in surprise. She sets down the knife and the half-sliced fruit on a cutting board. "Did school end early?"

"Yes. There was an earthquake, and the school decided it was best for us to go home for the rest of the day."

The explanation exits her mouth mechanically. Mrs. Iki's eyebrows push inward.

"An…earthquake?"

Hiyori nods once. She feels like the clumsy puppeteer of her own body, manipulating strings to make the right movements. It comes out very wrong—too jerky and too stiff. Her bizarre reaction doesn't escape her mother, who walks around the counter. Hiyori takes a wary step back.

"I haven't felt any earthquakes." Mrs. Iki's eyes are wide and worried. "Are you sure you're okay?"

To Hiyori's utter horror, her cold-throated numbness evaporates on the instant. It's been the only thing carrying her this far. Her hands jerk forward. She wants someone to touch her—perhaps, to pull her back from a deep hole. Or maybe to push her into it.

"Yes, it was on the news," she says. Her tone is dangerously brittle, her throat as dry and rough as sand. "Maybe you didn't feel it here."

Mrs. Iki gives her a sharp look.

"Well…I'm sure the school just wants to be cautious. But sending you home for the rest of the day seems excessive. Isn't it almost exam time?"

Hiyori nods.

"Well, no wonder you look worried," her mother chuckles, and moves back to the fruit on the counter. She resumes slicing.

It's the careful flick of the knife as it shaves the peeling away. Flick by precise flick—it makes the mundane ritual something wonderful, worshipful.

"I love you—" Hiyori says, her vision drowning in something. "A lot."

Mrs. Iki's back stiffens. Before Hiyori can move, her mother sets down the knife again, comes over to her, and takes her chin firmly between her fingers. She forces Hiyori's gaze upward, and into her own eyes.

Hiyori hiccups wetly, and she knows her mother can see the tears.

"I know that, Hiyori," Mrs. Iki says, sternly. Then she hugs her, laughing a little, like her daughter is a ridiculous child who must be comforted after a storm.

"I love you too. What is going on with you today?"

 _I watched a man commit suicide in front of me._

"Are you worried about exams?"

 _He looked at me as he died._

"There are just…so many bad things happening," she says into her mother's shoulder. It's no louder than a mutter.

It's not a lie. And it's a good thing it's not, because Mrs. Iki is not in the habit of being lied to.

"Nothing else? Are you sure, Hiyori?"

She leans away, and her mother's face swims in front of her. Feeling like a sharp stick is twisting between her ribs, Hiyori turns toward the door.

"Nothing. I promise."

Her mother's eyes bore into her back. She makes her voice sound casual:

"I think I'll just go to my room. And rest a little."

And Hiyori rushes out of the kitchen, leaving her mother standing aimlessly in the middle of it.

/

"Hiyori—!"

Mrs. Iki hears her daughter stumble up the stairs, and something else approximating a muffled sob meets her ears. She starts after Hiyori, then pauses. She turns back to the uncut fruit.

If her daughter isn't going to talk to her, then she won't force it. Solitude may be what she needs, rather than maternal prying. But before Mrs. Iki returns to the abandoned fruit and cutting board on the countertop, her eyes catch the small white card adorned with Hiyori's handwriting. She must have slipped it onto the countertop before they talked.

Mrs. Iki picks it up, eyeing the unfamiliar telephone number. Turning it over, she finds Hiyori's note written on the back.

 _A friend of mine needs some work, so call him if you have any odd jobs you need done for cheap._

Then, scrawled almost as an afterthought:

 _Don't worry if he introduces himself as a "delivery god," that's just his thing._

"A delivery god," Mrs. Iki repeats out loud.

And for some reason she thinks of blue. Blue and black, and a dark shape balancing on top of her refrigerator.

Hiyori really has been spending a lot of time out of the house.

Quicker than she can grasp them, the strange images flee her memory, but she slips the card in her pocket.

/

When she gets to her room, Hiyori drops her body on her bed. Her spirit practically flies out of it, like her skin is a lead casket that ill fits the consciousness inside. The moment she sheds her body, the smell of the city pounds her nerves; it's a wonder the headache she's fought all day hasn't rendered her mind useless.

Her body is small and limp on top of the covers. She looks down at it with a mixture of pity and deep, aching melancholy. Maybe it was never meant to hold her for as long as it has, or maybe she has simply asked too much of it. Humans are supposed to forget their encounters with the Far Shore, so maybe her body will take it a step further and refuse to accept her spirit again.

She doesn't stick around to find out.

Without hesitation, Hiyori plunges into the storm-wracked city. The muggy air clogs her nose with the stench of ayakashi and human despair. Still, she manages to single out the scent that has become as familiar to her as her own breath, and follows it across the fog-drenched expanse of Tokyo.

Soon, she doesn't need her sense of smell to tell her where the battleground is. Hiyori kicks her way up to the top of a high concrete wall, and from that vantage point she sees the column of escaping spirits mushrooming across the sky from the nearby park. From here, she can even hear the _whoosh_ of blades, and the shriek of ayakashi as they are rent.

She leaps her way across a few more blocks, and the vent itself comes into sight.

At first, Hiyori can't fathom its size. From atop a telephone pole, it looks to her to be about the size of three city blocks. The gaping mouth of the crater scars the earth like a poisoned wound.

And then there's the ayakashi. The air, so thick with their voices and limbs and wings, almost hides from her vantage point the two gods at the epicenter of the maelstrom.

It's a sight that arrests her—paralyzes her momentarily with its splendor. Yato and Bishamon are a truly incredible team. She can hardly see them, but not because of the cloud of phantoms; she can't follow their movements because they are too fast, too bright. The swing of Sekki arcs like a sunbeam, and for a moment, she feels warm.

Maybe she doesn't have to do this.

/

 _Hey—Yato._

Yukine's thoughts have been calm; Yato recognizes the the floating, almost unmoored freedom that comes with battle fever. But, because Yato knows his shinki like the shape of his own thumbnail, he can detect the thread of discouragement weaving into Yukine's tone.

"Mm?" he grunts, refusing to spare breath. An ayakashi fangs its way toward Bishamon and he rends it.

 _She's here._

/

Across an immense distance, Hiyori hears the groan of the vent's mouth splitting wider. The warmth that touched her seconds ago dissolves, and her skin ices over. A thin, impenetrable coat of glass separates her from everything in her environment. Suddenly, there's a scream.

The sound is totally isolated from the rumble and roar, and comes from somewhere behind and beneath her. She looks around, away from the fighting gods and their song of battle. She glances down toward the ground, where she sees humans panicking, huddling in clusters like frightened squirrels.

The scream came from a little girl. One of her hands clings tightly to her mother's, and the other points unerringly toward the ayakashi cloud. Hiyori realizes with a shock—she is still young enough to see them.

"Monsters, mama!"

The tip of Hiyori's tail swishes, and the little girl looks straight at her. The fearful expression on her small face doesn't change.

 _Monsters._

Hiyori jumps down from the telephone pole, her feet gently descending onto the pavement. She starts running.

/

"Who—?" Yato shouts, his brain a few clicks behind Yukine's.

Something streaks past him. Something blurry, and pink-tailed.

/

None of the ayakashi touch her. She doesn't expect them to.

It's loud here, and hot. She finds herself standing with her toes a bare inch from the vent's edge. Around her, the air ripples with combustion and volume. It lifts her hair away from her face, whipping it against her neck.

There is also a very silent, alive pressure that separates her from the chaos. She's on the tongue of the beyond, waiting to be swallowed.

If this is all she can do, then it would be selfish—unforgivably selfish—to keep delaying.

Even if Yato and Bishamon manage to seal this vent by themselves, then another larger, more terrible one will open in its place. More will open, and along with them more people will die. Even gods can die. That's what Tenjin would say—and despite his shortcomings and his mistakes, Hiyori knows he wasn't wrong about this. It's her fault that this hellmouth is open, so it's her job to close it.

But it's hard to take that step forward. She wonders why everything is suddenly so blurry. Something wet, and hotter than the wind, rolls down her face. If only for herself, she wishes she could still be numb, so these selfish, burning tears won't make her job worse.

It's already hard enough for her to walk forward, and the wind is so very, very hot.

/

It's not so much a shout, as it is a wordless jolt of horror that streaks up both his arms and vibrates sickeningly at the back of Yato's throat. He recoils violently at the sensation, stumbling backward a few steps into a spot that is clear, for now, of ayakashi.

"Yukine—what the hell is going on with you?!"

Something comes crashing down on Yukine, crumbling his self-possession like broken pottery. Yato flinches at his weapon's naked terror.

 _Look!_ Yukine demands, his insistence pulling Yato's eyes toward the mouth of the vent.

And he looks.

/

 ** _You have a good smell._**

Hiyori takes a deep breath, and closes her eyes. Her nose tells her more than her tear-fogged vision does. She smells the foulness of the vent and what is beneath. She smells the thousand starving smiles of the ayakashi who salivate, waiting for her to join them. She smells something else: wet, and quivering, and alive, and realizes that she is breathing through the nose of a hungry phantom.

Her lips pull back, and she bares her teeth. It _is_ a nice smell.

 ** _Come to us. Become us. You belong with us._**

Then.

"Hiyori?"

One foot turns. Then the other. She faces away from the vent, and at once its voices and its wild hunger release her.

Yato's eyes are wide, filled with nothing but surprise. At any second, he could smile and run over to her. Hiyori clings to the perfection of that look on his face; she dwells in its innocence. He looks so young.

Her silent, selfish, flawless moment unravels like thread. And a growl rolls up from the belly of the world:

 ** _Come._**

/

Afterward, Yato won't remember the look on Hiyori's face so much as he will remember the smallness of her body against the vent's eruption. She is so tiny.

But she still turns toward him, and tears leave bright tracks down her face.

Why is she here? Why is she crying?

He doesn't imagine it: her feet move toward him. She's coming back to him. Two, then three steps forward—or, maybe it's him. Maybe he's the one walking.

A bat-winged ayakashi explodes out of the vent, wrapping its talons around her left shoulder. Blight blooms on her flesh, down her elbow and all the way up to her neck, and she screams. Or maybe he screams. Or Yukine. He's trapped inside his own head with nothing but noise and the terrible black flower unfolding its petals across Hiyori's skin.

Another bat-winged ayakashi emerges. It buries its thick proboscis deep into Hiyori's back. Yato hears her spine snap, and Sekki clatters out of his hands.

Blight burns through the rest of her body, all the way down to her fingertips, her toenails. It consumes her skin like a flame through paper.

"Yato! What are you doing?! Don't just stand there…!"

His head rotates toward the voice. It's Bishamon. She is still fighting; she is fighting the wall of ayakashi all by herself. She is yelling at him. How very, very odd that his legs won't move.

Yukine's bright, thin voice slices away the fog surrounding him:

 _…you going to move?! Hurry up, Yato!_

Very slowly, but not slowly enough, his head turns back toward Hiyori. He still doesn't really think she's there. Hiyori would never be so stupid—she would never walk here on her own, outside her body. He told her not to. She has to have known—

Suddenly, he's sick with certainty: she knows. She knew.

Yato doesn't feel himself move, but he does. Because Sekki is back in his hands, and his mouth tastes like war and fury. He's flying at her.

But, all at once, there are too many spirits there. There are so many ayakashi where there had been a clear patch just seconds ago. And then there are more. They are silent, and awful, and crawling into the vent.

They're crawling back in, because—

"Yato, the vent is shrinking!"

Bishamon shouts these words, but they don't make sense. There are still ayakashi swirling around them—no one has created any borderlines. But the vent is shrinking. Soil erupts from the vast displacement of earth as the perimeter rushes toward itself.

The wind of its closing is faster and louder than a steam engine. It sucks tens, hundreds of ayakashi back into the vent. Flying gravel scrapes Yato's face; blood trickles thick down from his eyebrow. An ayakashi, caught in the windstorm, twirls past almost gracefully, and its fang catches his forearm. Immediately, that arm feels like it's been flayed with a white-hot knife.

He grits his teeth, staring ahead, shielding his vision with one arm.

Hiyori still stands in front of the vent. Her body is upright, immovable against the wind that uproots several small trees. Her head is bowed. Ragged wings have erupted from her shoulders, and the end of her spirit cord tatters away into smaller, buzzing creatures. The two bat ayakashi cling to her, one on her shoulder and the other hanging off her back like a grotesque third wing.

Yato waits for her to look up. Because the shape he sees—it can't be—

"Hiyori?"

She shouldn't be able to hear him. But she must, because she raises her head again. One eye looks straight at him, and the other stares emptily—the bulging, syrupy stare of a corrupt phantom.

 _What the—Hiyori!_ Yukine pounds on Yato's consciousness with frantic fists. _Yato, what's wrong with her?_

All that comes out of his mouth is a tortured wheeze.

From that distance, Hiyori's human eye glistens with a final tear. Her mouth stretches, cracking at its blighted edges in a smile that could still be beautiful.

"…Nice smell."

And she falls into the vent, the bat ayakashi still clinging to her. There's no air left in the world—the whole world—even though Yato gasps for it. His disobedient legs lunge forward—but something strong and warm yanks him roughly back.

The hole in the ground is the size of a manhole—an apple—a coin. An inch from his clutching fingers, that monster of a vent whittles down to a needleprick, and closes with a tiny, dry _pop._


	20. teeth

After the vent shuts, there is silence.

Bishamon finds herself on the ground, balanced on one elbow and her knees. One of her hands is fisted in the back of Yato's jersey, after she pulled him back from the edge. She lifts her chin to see him, still sprawled stomach-down. One of his hands is an outstretched empty fist, fingers curling around smoke.

Her head isn't completely clear yet, but Bishamon recollects the battle: a horde of ayakashi that vanished as quickly as it had materialized—a vortex of shrieking wind and ash—a figure standing silhouetted at the edge of the vent. It all comes back to her slowly, and thick, through her reeling head.

That girl had been here. Iki Hiyori had come here.

 _Veena, are you all right?_

Bishamon assesses her own strength, releasing her grip on Yato's jersey. She stands.

"Yes."

Her composure keeps returning, though her memories are still mixed and vague. Along with them comes a tumbling awareness of aches and burns as her body informs her of its injuries.

"Ah—!"

 _My lady…_

"No…I-I am fine."

She had seen that the vent was closing—Chouki, actually— _he_ had seen it, and warned her. Then, she had shouted it to Yato, so he could steer clear—but he didn't hear her—or wouldn't hear her—because he was reaching for something else—

 _Was it her?_ Her hafuri's voice is shocked. _Did…_ she _do that?_

Hiyori had closed the vent—healed the infection—and all by herself. Up until now, Bishamon had never quite let herself believe what she heard at the colloquy: that it could really be possible for one human to close the floodgates between the phantom and the human worlds. Now, she has no choice but to believe.

 _Veena, look up._

Kazuma's voice and his navigating arrows direct her attention away from the ground. The remaining ayakashi, the few that weren't pulled into the vent, disperse throughout the city. However, some of them become visibly smaller and weaker. A few of the flying ones drop right out of the sky and disintegrate on the ground.

 _What's happening to them?_ asks Kinuha.

Bishamon understands—or at least, she thinks she does.

"That girl gave herself to them," she mutters, really only saying it to herself. Just a human…one little human.

Suddenly, there's a crunching noise near her feet, which reminds her—

"Yato."

He's still spread-eagled on the ground, forehead pressed right against the ruined earth. After saying his name, Bishamon doesn't speak. She thought she could say _something_ , perhaps—anything at all. But no words offer themselves.

Yato's arm moves; he puts a hand over the nape of his neck. He whispers something, and her ears strain to hear it.

"Hey—hey, Yukine. It's okay."

Yato's spine curls; he slowly lifts himself off the ground into a kneeling position, still facing away from her. One hand continues rubbing the back of his neck, knuckles kneading deeply against the vertebrae.

"Hey—we're gonna get her back—it's fine—stop, stop crying…"

Bishamon watches as he bends forward, picking up Sekki's blades. He rises, and begins walking away in the opposite direction. All she can see is his straight back, and his fingers pressing white around the blade hilts.

"What are you doing?" she asks, quietly. Her voice has the shadow of a threat, without the substance.

"Going to get her."

"Yato…"

He keeps walking, his outline shrinking into a thinner, more distant shadow. Kazuma's worry amplifies hers, but even so, she doesn't mean to shout:

 _"Stop!"_

He barely pauses at her voice, and doesn't turn around. At last, his footsteps stutter to a halt when she appears in front of him, blocking his path.

"If you are thinking of trying to enter the underworld, I will prevent you myself."

Despite her words, her hands are still weaponless. Yato's eyes are turned toward the ground; she still can't see his face.

"You won't," he says.

She hesitates, and he takes another few steps, walking around her like she's merely a fence post. Turning to watch him, she says quietly:

"Whatever you would find there, even if you _could_ find anything there—it would not be her."

He stops again, and shivers.

"You don't know that."

Bishamon recoils from the flatness in his voice. It's like trying to reason with a statue.

"Yato, this vent may be closed now, but if you try to elbow your way into Yomi, it could throw everything back into imbalance. Do not do anything reckless—"

"I don't think you understand," he interrupts. There's a movement in his hands, and Bishamon's eyes flash down. She thought his hands were shaking, but then she realizes—the trembling comes from Sekki. During the pause, the tips of the twin blades begin to clatter against the pebbles on the ground.

"Allow him to revert," she tells Yato.

He doesn't seem to hear her; it's like he's listening to something else, something much more important than her demanding, too-loud voice. The blades in his hands vibrate more, creating a thrumming whine.

"Your hafuri! Let him—"

Before she finishes, Yato has whispered something and Yukine is back in human form. The boy collapses to his knees and buries his face deep in his hands—under his breath, muttering a litany of horrified questions.

"Wh-why did you come, why did you come? Why did you do that? Hiyori—oh gods, why did you come?"

Yato keeps rubbing the back of his neck, and Bishamon finally notices the darkness creeping down from the bottom of his sleeve. It hisses, steaming quickly down to his wrist and over his fingers.

"You need to take care of that." She points at the blight.

Yato stops rubbing his neck, and lifts his arm; he looks at his hand with complete detachment.

"Oh. Right."

He doesn't move, and neither does his shinki. The latter's murmuring turns into a wordless, broken noise, that still escapes even though he presses his knuckles against his mouth. Bishamon tries not to hear it.

"Thank you," Yato says at last. He finally looks up at her. "I'll take care of it."

Her mouth presses into a thin line. Those words coming from Yato—particularly in this too-calm, lifeless voice—never mean anything good.

"I would like it if you both came with me—"

"Don't bother yourself anymore with us, Bishamon."

He interrupts her again: a mistake that would, at any other time, call for his head. Now, she doesn't make anything of it. For a clipped second, the two gods lock eyes.

Then, Bishamon turns to leave.

 _Veena, what are you doing?_ Kazuma asks, alarmed.

Her shoulders slump, the sudden limpness of her body hidden beneath her armor.

"This time is theirs. I…cannot interfere."

She doesn't say aloud, "not right now." But he must hear it, because Kazuma's distraction fades into a dull buzz in the back of her mind.

Leaping onto Kuraha's back, she cuts down a weak, wandering ayakashi before leaving the scene. By the time she casts a glance back at the two lone figures—one standing, one kneeling—neither have moved. The dark outlines of them melt into the permanently disfigured landscape, looking at home among the burnt tree stumps, and the blackened mats of uprooted turf.

Within a few minutes, they arrive back in Takama-ga-hara. Once inside her home, Bishamon reverts all her shinki, and only then does she allow a moment for herself.

Kazuma stands at her side, his fingers resting gently on her elbow. He waits patiently during the time it takes for her to speak.

"I cannot believe that girl," she says. She's surprised at how much it's shaken her. "Why?! Why would she—?"

She breaks off, too exhausted to finish the question. Kazuma's hand on her elbow is steadying.

"It is difficult to watch the people you love put themselves in danger for you," he says. But he doesn't sound at all happy about it.

"I think…perhaps, that is why."

Bishamon nods in tired agreement, and she finds herself sympathetic—sympathetic, no less, to this god whom she had demonized for so long. So much of herself went into loathing him that, even now, she feels emptiness where that measure of hatred once lived.

When she tries to answer Kazuma, her voice at first refuses to come out. His fingers on her elbow tighten, and her hand finds them, nearly crushing them.

"Will you keep an eye on those two?" she asks in a whisper, looking beneath his chin at the buttons of his uniform. "They might not mind if it's you."

He smiles, not moving his warm hand from beneath hers.

"Of course I will."

/

Yato sits in front of the purified spring, pouring its water over his arm in silence. Yukine crouches a few yards away, dipping his hands into the water too, even though his skin doesn't show any blight. His breath keeps catching, hooking harshly on the inside of his lungs, and his chest—his chest aches.

The bruise-dark stain sizzles and steams off Yato's hand as he washes, and washes, the process becoming mechanical: scoop, spill, scrub, repeat. He does it so many times, the skin on his arm turns red and chapped. Sloshing water over his hand one final time, he sits back on his heels and stays there: motionless and silent.

Yukine rubs his eyes with his fingertips, which are ice-cold from the water. He's not crying anymore, but his eyes are raw, and shot with swollen blood vessels. Slowly, his breathing quiets, evening out like the surface of a tide-beaten rock.

He doesn't speak. Neither of them do, for a very, very long time.

The words that finally surface from that submerged, suffocating quietness come from Yukine's throat.

"She can't come back, then. The way I did, I mean."

He doesn't put it as a question.

"No."

Yukine's chest aches deeper—his ribs clutch at his lungs in a painful grip.

"Ah…so. What—what now?"

"We save her."

Yukine stares at his fingers. Every knuckle is suddenly sharp and detailed.

"But, I thought—"

"You thought… _what,_ exactly? That we'd abandon her?"

Yato's tone is suddenly ferocious, and Yukine flinches. He stares even harder at his knuckles, watching them go white. His voice cowers in his throat like a hurt creature.

"I don't think—I don't think she'd want you—us—to do anything stupid. Because she, uh. She saved us…you know? She did— _that_ —because it would save us—and everyone."

His hands blur, turning into pale, spidery shapes against his dark knees.

Yato stands up so quickly that Yukine almost doesn't see him move. Suddenly, he is being loomed over, and he remembers—his pulse crashing in his ears—how frightening Yato can be. How tall.

"Your point?" the god asks, low and growling.

Yukine gulps; he wishes he weren't here. He wishes he were somewhere very far away—where his hands wouldn't be so cold—where his eyes wouldn't swell and ache—where he wouldn't have to be a damn _guidepost_.

Most of all, he wishes he weren't so certain of himself—that he weren't so awfully, awfully right.

"You know—she wouldn't. She wouldn't want that. For us to put ourselves in danger for her, after she—"

He swallows, coughs.

"I think that's, uh, maybe—why she was, um…crying. Because she was trying to help us, and didn't have time to explain."

Yato doesn't speak, nor does he sit back down. Yukine waits, swallowing again—again. Then he says, somehow even more quietly:

"I want to save her…too. I do. I mean—I know why you would—"

He chokes to a halt. This is no good. His throat bobs violently—he swallows again, forcing that large, bitter blackness all the way down his throat. After that, his voice is stronger.

"I mean, don't you think she—H-Hiyori—had a good reason? There was that whole thing with her being…half-ayakashi and all. S-so maybe she figured it out and—and then she—"

Suddenly Yato crouches down next to him, and Yukine breaks off.

Yato doesn't look at him, but stares down into the spring instead. The water is almost too clear to reflect anything.

The blockage in Yukine's throat returns, and he gasps—grits his teeth—tells himself that he did what he could, because he promised, he _promised_. Yato is the one he's supposed to protect. And even though iron hands grip his lungs and squeeze them tight, he can't abandon that vow. He would never be able to forgive himself for it—Hiyori would never forgive him for it—

Yato stands up again.

"You did your best," he says, reading Yukine's tortured expression—even though he sniffs and contorts his face and tries to hide it. A weight lands on his shoulder, squeezing gently, and Yukine's shoulders stiffen.

"Okay. Let's go home."

Yato starts walking. Yukine waits for a half-second, then gets up and follows him, feeling punched when he sees Yato rub absently at the back of his neck.

He didn't do his best. Not really.

His best wouldn't leave them turning in the direction of Kofuku's, when "home" used to mean the Iki house. It wouldn't leave them walking away from this spring—just the two of them—and the iron beast clutches tighter, tighter, in his throbbing chest.

/

Somehow, Kofuku and Daikoku already know.

"Hey, kiddo." The latter ruffles Yukine's hair. He ignores the small tremor in Daikoku's voice, and the two big, splashy drops that land on the top of his head.

Across the table sits Kofuku, who alternates between stirring her rice with a finger and glancing nervously over at Yato. He sits a little farther back from the low table than usual, hair falling over his eyes.

After a long, uncomfortable interval of hush, Kofuku clears her throat. It's an uncharacteristically shy sound.

"So, um. You're both _really_ sure she's…"

Her words die off as Yato kicks himself back from the low table, lurching to his feet.

"I'm going to bed."

Before Yukine can object, Yato is gone, and he quickly feels the need to apologize.

"I—I'm sorry," he says, stumbling. "He just—we—"

Daikoku's hand finds the top of his head again, and Kofuku leans across the table to take both his clenched fists.

"You don't have to say sorry for him, Yuki."

Her face begins to waver around the edges—a nondescript, peach-colored oval—and Yukine sniffs violently.

"But you do have to look out for him," she adds, squeezing his hands in her tiny ones. "Even if he doesn't want you to."

" _Especially_ then," Daikoku mumbles, beginning to clear away the dishes.

Yukine wonders how the hell he's going to look out for Yato when he's not sure he can even look out for himself.

Emptiness yawns in him as he climbs the stairs later: a hole wriggling open in his chest, revealing something living there that's worse than phantoms. When he looks down at himself, he's surprised to find nothing changed. Maybe when he was alive, he had somehow managed to understand how grief hollows a person out like a sharpened spoon. Maybe he will get used to it again.

He crawls into bed, but not before making sure the darkened blur on the other futon is really Yato. Listening for breath, he finds it—slow, and even.

Much too even, and too measured for real sleep.

Yukine crawls into his own futon and lies on his side, eyes wide open, staring at the bright lamp until rings and trembling rings of light chase themselves to the outer edges of his vision. He stares into that blinding bulb until his cheeks are wet from the pain, and he can hardly see anything because of those glowing rings. He tries to keep his footing, to distract himself—he really does.

But when he dreams, it's of a demon with Hiyori's face, and her voice, and he wakes up, covered in sweat and tasting salt. The bitterness at the back of his throat means he's been stinging again. He bolts upright in alarm, the words coughed up like pebbles: "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The other futon is empty.

/

Something doesn't occur to Yukine until two days later—and luckily Yato is back by then. He returns to Kofuku's with his mouth as tight as a slammed door, and Yukine doesn't ask him where he's been. In fact, the two don't really speak until a while later, when Yukine bursts out with:

"Oh _no_ —! Hiyori's family."

Yato keeps leaning against the wall, like he has been for some time.

"What about them?"

"Are—are you kidding? They might…her _body_ might be there! Shouldn't we…?"

Yato shakes his bowed head.

"No."

Yukine's mouth opens again—

" _No_."

That tone doesn't brook argument, so Yukine turns back to his book. His eyes slide over page 48, stopping at the last word of the bottom paragraph. And he starts again, at the top of page 48—

/

They haven't taken any more jobs since the last vent was sealed. Since then, the outpouring of ayakashi into the human world has been vastly slowed—even more so than before there was ever any news of a gods' colloquy.

As a consequence, there's not much for them to do outside of spending even more time at Kofuku's.

"I don't think it's good for them," Daikoku says, scrubbing grease off the side of the sink.

From here, he can see Yato wandering around the yard. He's done this for a few days—he hasn't actually spent much time inside the building since that first night—and this pacing habit doesn't sit well with Daikoku.

If anything, it looks like Yato couldn't care less where he is or what his limbs are doing, as long as he's somehow in motion. And, the last Daikoku checked, Yukine is still trying to get some studying done. The kid said he was worried about "falling behind." But the bookmark in his textbook—last put there by Hiyori—stays on the same page.

Kofuku pulls herself up onto the counter to sit facing him, causing a brief commotion by knocking over three pots and hitting her head on a cupboard. After things have settled, she rests her elbows on her knees and balances her pointed chin on both sets of knuckles.

"Me neither. But I don't know what to tell them—I mean, it's always Hi—"

She gulps, and the scrubbing noise stops briefly. Daikoku looks over at her, but her head is turned away. Hair swings over her shoulder, hiding her face.

"It was Hiyoriin who gave them a reason to get out and do things—"

The shrilling of a cell phone interrupts her. The sound originates from the yard. She and Daikoku watch as Yato's pacing halts. He reaches into a pocket and pulls the phone out, flipping it open mechanically without looking at the caller ID.

They both hear his monotone greeting, even though he faces away from them. Suddenly, his head jerks up when he hears the caller's voice, and once again, Daikoku stops scrubbing the sink.

Yato says a few more things to the caller, but he mutters them inaudibly into the phone. After the short, tense conversation, he vanishes from the yard in a streak of godlight.

Kofuku and Daikoku exchange a shared look of confusion and concern.

/

Yukine rubs and rubs his eyes, and the letters still won't hold their right places on the page. He's about to slam the book shut when he hears—almost hears— _"Is this page too hard, Yukine?"_ and he looks up in joy.

A memory, an echo. An outline of negative space that his brain refuses to relinquish.

He exhales in defeat. Maybe it's sadness that he feels, but it doesn't seem correct—he doesn't feel like she's lost _._ Absent, certainly—but not gone. Not all the way.

"Yukine."

The voice—the _real_ voice—that comes from the doorway makes him jump. He twists around from his seat on the floor to look at its owner.

The face he sees is almost enough to make him look twice; this is not the gaunt, heartbroken person he had expected. It's Yato, but it's no version of Yato he's ever seen before.

"Hi?" he answers.

Yato comes in, but doesn't sit down. He walks across the room to lean against the wall, crossing his arms loosely. Yukine waits for him to follow up the greeting with something else.

When this fails, he clears his throat.

"So, um…where've _you_ been?"

It comes out more accusatory than he had intended, but Yato doesn't seem to notice.

"I just talked to Iki Masaomi."

Yukine blinks.

"And how was that?"

A muscle in Yato's neck twitches. Yukine can imagine how a conversation with Hiyori's brother might have gone. Of course…of course he would ask them what had happened to her, once she wouldn't wake up.

"You might have taken me along," he mutters, turning back to page 48. He should probably be more angry at Yato for blatantly going against his own words and talking to Hiyori's family…Yukine has a vivid image of her parents, her brother, gathered around her empty body in a hospital room, and those iron fingers clutch and claw at his lungs again.

Suddenly, he feels too exhausted to work up any sort of a rage.

"I picked this up," Yato says.

Reluctantly, Yukine twists around again; Yato pinches something small and white between his fingers. One of his own homemade business cards. He hands it to Yukine, who reads the handwritten note. He stares at the familiar stroke of Hiyori's penmanship, pinpoints the neat quirk of her lines—and feels, more than ever, like she's still here.

She should be here.

From where it's stored, somewhere behind those iron fingers, his anger finally rouses itself. It fills his throat, and he bites it off in tough, cold syllables.

"Why the _hell_ did you go alone?!" He grips the business card so tightly that it quivers.

Yato steadily ignores him, and says:

"I've been thinking. How did Hiyori know?"

"Know. _What_." Yukine grinds the words out, still glaring.

"About…everything _._ Everything that I told you."

Yukine's ears start to ring, but he stays silent. Yato continues, like he's reciting lines:

"You had the right idea from the start, Yukine. She wasn't going to listen to me. It was my error—this is all entirely on my shoulders, and I don't want you to blame yourself. I should have paid attention to you. And now, I'm afraid you get stuck with the consequences."

Yukine isn't sure which discomforts him more: the use of the word, "consequences," or the void, impassive tone it's uttered in.

"I was too stupid and happy to see anything clearly," Yato continues. His voice isn't so steady anymore. "I thought that just being…together, would be enough for her. It—it was enough for _me_. I should have said something better to her—found a more believable excuse for the colloquy."

There's something raw being exposed in him, bit by agonizing bit. He brings one hand up to cover his eyes.

"I don't know. I don't…I really don't know what I did wrong, but I know—it's _my_ fault. I did it—again—j-just like I did with—"

Yato's voice rasps—his breath actually rattles, like he's on his deathbed. Yukine starts up from the cushion, but Yato holds out his other hand in warning. In a few seconds, his hand drops from his eyes and he continues, voice as calm as ever.

"Anyway. All this to say: I think it's time we stopped sitting around."

Yukine stares, perplexed.

"You mean…keep going like usual? Keep destroying ayakashi?"

Yato's chuckle sounds like ice cracking, and it's just as cold.

"I mean, doing something _real—_ about what happened. The ayakashi were the weapon, not the wielder. I'm not sure which of the gods told Hiyori she had to get herself involved, but I'm sure as hell going to find out."

The pit of Yukine's stomach drops sickeningly. _Told her…?_

He endures the next interval of silence, waiting. Waiting. At last, Yato takes a deep breath.

"Yukine."

"…Yes?"

"Have you had any doubts, up until now—any real doubts—about your connection with me?"

"No."

Yukine's answer is unhesitating, but the single syllable is speared with unease. Yato cuts him a keen look from the corner of his eye.

"No, I haven't," he reiterates with more assurance.

But he's still wary. After all, he became the shinki of the old Yato: the one with the loud, obnoxious laughter, and the stupid good luck charms, and the terrible jokes. Not whoever this other god is.

Yato, however, seems satisfied with his answer. He smiles mirthlessly, lips pulled back in a shark's grin.

"Good."

Yukine shivers, though the afternoon and evening are still extremely warm. The late summer sunset sprays Yato's half-shaded face with the color of blood. Even his teeth are red.

"So then. You won't have a problem standing by my side if I take the fight to heaven."


	21. undertow

Yato watches Yukine closely. He's sure this will be the tipping point for his shinki—he's already been edgy and aloof for some time. Surely, surely, the foolhardiness—the sheer, unmitigated idiocy—of going up alone against the heavenly forces will be too much for him.

After a few tense seconds, Yukine's mouth flattens into a line. He turns around to fully face where Yato still leans against the wall. The hardened, adult expression on his face looks incorrect on such young features.

"I promised didn't I?"

Yato stares.

"You're not going to do anything that stupid unless I'm there to protect you. Besides—"

Yukine looks down at the little business card clenched in his fist. The writing left on it is a bit smeared: one teardrop's worth of moisture.

"I…want to do it. She's gone. I want to—to hurt them a lot. For that."

 _/_

Some time later, they go to her funeral; Yato doesn't remember how he ended up there, or what day it is, or why he's at a funeral for someone who is absolutely not dead. There's some talking. Some crying. There are photos of her that he won't look at—he hasn't let himself see an image of her face, since…

"Yukine. Why are we here?"

Yukine glances at him, forehead creasing in small wrinkles.

"You said we had to. You don't remember?"

Should he? His thoughts feel like smoky arms, gripping him with amorphous limbs that dissolve as soon as they find purchase.

"Oh…yeah. Yeah, I do."

Yukine keeps shooting sideways glances at him until Yato grits his teeth in sudden, violent annoyance.

"What?! What is it—what did I say wrong?"

Even though they're sitting in the very back—and they're invisible to nearly everyone there—his sudden volume prompts a few heads to turn. Yukine slides down in his seat, looking mortified. He whispers:

"You said it yourself. We _had_ to come, because funerals are like breeding grounds for ayakashi."

That's right. Yato remembers now. His job is to fight them…for some reason. But—

What if one of them is _her._

They haven't fought any ayakashi—not since Hiyori did what she did. Yato has seen them, more of them recently: regrouping, clustering and feeding on the pockets of depression and anxiety that still thrive. They have always found nooks and corners to wait out the storms. He used to regard those debased creatures with a sort of distant superiority: phantoms have always been phantoms. Gods have always been gods.

But now, he finds himself searching for her face in their twisting features, her voice in the noise of their hunger, for any part of her that could still whisper, _good smell, please come closer—you smell—_ ** _NICE_** **.**

"…Yato? H-hey!"

Yukine shakes his sleeve a bit, and he looks more worried now. Yato's jaw aches; he's been clenching it, and then he tastes blood—from his tongue, probably.

He looks down at the anxious boy next to him, and tries to soften his look.

"Yes. I remember."

The two of them slip out of the little chapel afterward, managing to avoid any of Hiyori's family. Yato doesn't really want to relive the conversation he had with her brother.

/

 _Arriving instantly at the little café that's tucked away in one of the city's greener corners, he steels himself to explain, without explaining: to excuse, without excusing._

 _During that short conversation, he says what he can, and waits for withering, righteous blame to fall on his bent back._

 _He doesn't receive it._

 _Iki Masaomi only listens to him talk, while keeping his own silence. His hands rest palm up on the gray table; he gives Yato all his attention, looking at him through eyes that could be hers. Too much of her sits there, across that table, refusing to blame him._

 _"You won't tell me what really happened, will you?" Masaomi asks, without even a hint of resentment._

 _Yato shakes his head, all out of anything he could possibly say. There aren't enough apologies in him to make up the deficit._

 _Masaomi's eyes crinkle in a small smile. Yato blinks—it's Hiyori's face—and then it isn't, and he's left with dread reaching into him, resonating in him all the way to his bones. He will never be able to stop seeing her._

 _Masaomi is still speaking._

 _"She would have done it anyway—whatever it was that she was set on doing. You know her. So…I hope you don't take responsibility for something Hiyori decided on her own."_

 _Yato's bowed head jerks up—how did he—_

 _"I pieced some stuff together, from these,"—Masaomi holds up a handwritten note, and a business card. The note is Yukine's: the one he left in Hiyori's room on the morning of that day. The business card Yato recognizes as his own._

 _"So, Yato, it seems like you did what you could."_

 _And Masaomi smiles again, but it doesn't reach any farther than the corners of his lips._

/

Despite it being a funeral, there is nothing for them to kill there. Not even the smallest slithering, liquid shadow. This would strike Yato as odd—a little unnerving, even—if he bothered to think about it.

Yukine makes a note of it as they wander back to Kofuku's.

"Do you think it's because of—you know…"

He still can't say it out loud, and Yato can't figure out if that's because Yukine doesn't want to set him off, or because he can't say it without his own voice shaking.

Yato doesn't want to tell him that it's too much—it's always been _too much._ For one human girl to offer herself up…

The stakes had always been too high; he had seen that from the beginning. He doesn't want to tell Yukine that no matter how brave Hiyori's sacrifice had been, it could only have resulted in a temporary suture. That was his reason for accusing the colloquy of cowardice and evil: because they had allocated to humans the responsibility of setting right a colossal imbalance. One that humans could never handle on their own—let alone just _one_ of them.

So instead of answering, he just shrugs.

Back at home, they loiter on the porch for a few minutes before going inside. Kofuku and Daikoku had stayed home from the service so as to not sow her unlucky aura around the Iki family. Neither Yato nor Yukine feel like making conversation with them just yet.

After a few seconds of hesitation on the porch, Yukine clears his throat.

"You said the other day—something about fighting heaven."

"What—you backing out?" Yato asks. It's not a challenge. He just needs to know if he still has Yukine's support.

He needs to know, because without it, he's left with no recourse but to name a nora.

"I'm not backing out," Yukine says, a bit peevishly. "I just wanted to know if there was, y'know. A _plan_."

Yato blinks. Yukine eyes him expectantly, and then his shoulders slump.

"So…no plan then? Just gonna charge in, guns blazing?"

Yato snorts. Of course he has a plan. But before he can explain his very genius and foolproof plan to Yukine, Kofuku catches sight of them from inside and orders them to come in.

/

The sun sets.

Yukine stays in the kitchen to help Daikoku put everything away for the evening, and Yato lies down on his futon for the first time in a while.

At such a time, when he _has_ to think about what happened, he turns the aftermath into a fantasy he can live with.

She's just on vacation, somewhere warm and quiet. He plans out what he'll tell her when she comes back from her trip—all the little conversations they'll have that he stores up in his head and plays to himself during nights he can't sleep. Which, now, is all of them.

There is another thing he does when he can't sleep.

He closes his eyes, and leans his head back, and imagines what it will be like—taking it out on them.

He will speak to the High Sentinel face-to-face; he will learn which of the gods had decided it was okay to trick a human into fixing their problems for them. Yato knows how persuasive he can be.

And, after the High Sentinel has whispered the information to him—she can only whisper, because her airway has been chopped up so neatly, flesh pared down to tendon and peeling in translucent curls like the skin of a fruit— _then_. He will find them.

It takes a lot to kill a god. But it takes surprisingly little to hurt one.

His lips curve up angelically. It's a delicious image, and the only one that really cheers him.

The other one—the one with Hiyori on her little, perfect island—that one is too aching, too precious, to be revisited much. He brings it out and holds it sometimes, softly, in the center of his palm, like a diamond. He puts it away quickly before it can be damaged.

He can't hold it for long, on account of his hands—how dark and dripping they are, stained from his other dream.

A corner of his mind is nagging him: sending pinpricks of ice that try to steer him toward a suggestion of guilt. How would he look right now, to her?

But he crushes that troublesome instinct—again and again—because she's not there to judge him anymore.

No one would really judge him for what he's about to do. Even Yukine, his supposed moral compass, is on his side.

 _"You're not gonna kill anybody ever again—not if I can help it."_

Yato's eyes fly open. The Yukine-voice in his mind is loud—alarmingly so. Before he can prevent himself, he's answering it.

" _I'm not going to kill anyone. Just…make them want to die. There's a hell of a difference."_

Inner-Yukine snorts.

 _"Oh, how very 'god-of-fortune' of you."_

Yato squeezes his eyes shut again and fists his hands in his hair, accidentally pulling some of it out at the roots. That's enough. Enough already.

He heaves himself all the way up from the futon, and scrawls a note on the blank side of Yukine's homework: _tomorrow, sunset._ And then he writes directions to a place he knows: a place that feels like the correct starting point for this type of errand.

Then he leaves behind the building he calls home, and starts walking toward that other place. To wait.

And—hopefully—to be alone inside his own damn mind.

/

Kazuma stands attentively in front of Bishamon's desk, waiting for her to react with anything other than a blank stare. At the moment, it's her only possible response to the news he's just delivered.

Despite the shock of it, she has to admit that she had anticipated its arrival. She had felt it, like the prickle of electricity before lightning.

"Yato and Yukine…attacking the heavens?"

"Yes. And today, apparently."

Bishamon tilts her chair back and presses her knuckles to her forehead.

"I expected more from Yato's guidepost. He should know better than to let his master entertain such an idea."

"Well…Yukine was actually the one to tell me about it."

She stops kneading her temples and looks up at him.

Kazuma's expression is serious…but also, could it be, a bit smug? She still thinks it was a good plan to have him look out for those two, but the responsibility may have gone to his head. He is, after all, still human.

Humoring him, she says:

"Then you have been a good example to him, Kazuma. But what does he expect to gain by feeding us information on Yato's foolish revenge plot?"

Kazuma responds with silence, and Bishamon makes the connection herself.

"Ah. I see. So the young hafuri is much more clever than he seems."

"It's the influence of his mentor, I'm sure," says Kazuma. She looks down at her fingernails, but can still hear him smirking.

"So—to whom do you tell tales when _I_ am the problematic one, Kazuma?" she retorts, expecting this to effectually shut him down.

At his silence, she looks up again. His face has instantly sobered, but not with the abashed expression she expects. Instead, his eyes cloud over with something ancient, and painful.

Bishamon remembers then—as if it were she instead who withstood the long, agonizing bite of guilt and grief, and the shoeless toil through mud to the doorstep of calamity.

 _Save my master, please, Yatogami. I will give you anything._

"I am sorry," she whispers, her hand over her eyes. He kneels down beside her chair.

"Veena…"

She takes a deep breath, and pinches the bridge of her nose, hard.

"I will go. I will talk to him. He may not listen."

Kazuma presses a hand over hers, where it rests on the arm of the chair.

"He will listen. I'm sure of it."

His voice is strong, and she sets her other hand over his, thumb gliding over the shape of his name. His fingers are warm and steady.

/

She finds Yato at one of the decrepit shrines: a place he used to frequent in other days, but not recently. Not for many decades.

He's sitting on the bench with his back to her, and so doesn't see her approach. When he at last hears her footsteps, his spine stiffens and he turns around quickly.

"Why are _you_ here?!"—then, glancing around, trying to look past her—

"Wait—where's Yukine?"

Bishamon walks all the way up to the bench and stops, standing directly in front of him. He's taken off guard at her fast approach and rears back a little.

He's weaponless, and she has arrived the same way. Their conversation will be private, and—if not strictly peaceful—at least free of outright combat.

When she speaks, her voice is quiet and reproving:

"You are fortunate that your hafuri has more sense than you do, Yato. Were you hoping to trap him in your own miserable suicide?"

Yato's jaw snaps shut with an audible click, the muscles of his neck working as he realizes what Yukine has done. She waits for him to bolt, but he doesn't.

"I would never do that to him," he finally says. "It's not a death sentence for either of us."

Bishamon makes a low, dismissive noise.

Above them, and off in the distance, there is a reverberating rumble. Glancing upward, she sees the sky undulate with clouds, the air trapped beneath them full of moisture and crackling heat. It's the kind of weather that could give birth to a late summer squall.

"A renegade god fueled by undisciplined rage and his sole shinki, attacking the forces of heaven. Explain to me how that's not a suicide mission."

He opens his mouth to retort, but she cuts him off before he can muster an argument.

"You might also try explaining how your vow to become a god of fortune includes throwing your life away. Explain how this recklessness of yours honors the shrine that girl made for you. Explain how your devotion to your worshiper—your _friend_ —justifies using her sacrifice as fuel for your own self-destruction."

Yato looks away from her, his glassy gaze falling off to the left, fixating on something invisible. She resolutely ignores the ticcing vein in his forehead.

"If you can explain all this satisfactorily, then I will join you myself and back your cause against heaven. But until then, I will make it my aim to stop you."

She waits. Looking at him, slouched on the shrine bench, she wonders if he really intended to go through with it at all.

He stays silent for a minute, and during that time she notices how bad he really looks. How tired—like his body is inhabited by something much older, and much sadder, than the Yato she's always ever seen.

At last he speaks, almost too quietly for her to hear.

"Why did you come, Bishamon?"

"Because I still owe you. It is my responsibility to curb your actions before you make an enormous mistake."

"What makes you think I'm making a mistake?" he asks dully, after another, shorter silence. He puts his elbows on his knees and rests his chin in one hand.

Bishamon pauses before answering. Then, instead, she sits down next to him.

On the bench beside her, his whole posture stiffens with suspicion. She doesn't look at him, but speaks to the empty air in front of her.

"I know what revenge looks like on you, Yato. You do not wear it well. And you know, as well as I do, that people who become ayakashi are in torment. They suffer eternally, without any hope of peace."

Her voice is softer now, and she hopes he'll remember. As deeply as he hurts now, she has hurt in much the same way: a long time ago, and hundreds of times over.

However, it's still not enough to prepare her for the cruelty of the next words that come from her mouth.

"So, if you really want to help her, then return to your task. Destroy every corrupted spirit you find—and hope with all your heart that one of them is hers."

Rain begins to come down, gently at first, soaking into the rotting roof slats of the old shrine. Then, the shower quickens, drumming with staccato knuckles on the earth, the bench, their heads.

The downpour is upon them. And in the distance, a storm.

/

 _What is her anchor, again? Is it…a smell, perhaps? A color?_

 _But smell and color are all entangled with and vomited out from each other: there is only one—the capital SENSE—the all-consuming, ever-devouring mouth that demands more, more, unendingly._ ** _More._**

 _There is something still in her that resists giving herself over to it—that resists letting it pull her into itself and drain her and fill her up with a voice that is not hers, a hunger that is not hers. Maybe she is surviving, or maybe she is only warping: being towed into the half of her that was always lurking, and now roars forth amidst the powerful collective of its fellows._

 _She thinks—if thought is there, and for the most part it isn't—that there must have been something…before._

 _Before she was so very hungry._

* * *

 **hi guys! a quick update: as much as I love posting chapters every few days, I won't be able to keep it up for the upcoming weeks and/or months, for two reasons.**

 **reason #1: I'm also working on updating my other norafic, _god of ashes_ , which has fallen sorely under the radar in the wake of my obsessive need to finish this one!**

 **reason #2: I'm preparing to go abroad for several months starting in mid-September, so that's taking up a lot of my energy/time/sanity, etc….so from now until the end of December, updates are gonna be sporadic, at best. :(**

 **that being said! I'll do my best to not leave you hanging for too many days at a time, depending on my travel plans and internet situation. feel free to shoot me a message on tumblr anytime asking about progress, if you like. :) my answer may not be enlightening, but I'll be happy to respond to the best of my ability.**

 **and finally, _thank you_ , profusely, for all your lovely feedback on this.** (◡‿◡✿)


	22. vernal

When Kofuku asks him why he's sitting on the porch all by himself, Yukine doesn't meet her eyes. However, the tempo of his restless heel-tapping spikes.

"It was too hot in there," he says, jerking his chin toward the inside of the house. Kofuku doesn't point out to him that it's even stuffier outside. Nor does she mention the drop of sweat that beads at his hairline, and rolls down his temple to shiver at his jaw.

She sets a cup of tea down next to his fisted hand, and, after a pause, sets down a second full cup. Then she goes back inside.

Yukine waits. Raindrops begin to puncture the pre-evening quietness.

Over the next half hour, the clouds rumble and roil overhead, and the gentle shower crescendoes into an outright downpour. Yukine takes a single sip of the tea, then makes a face and sets the cup back down.

This is the first real rainstorm they've had, and it's not pulling any punches. The porch overhang groans and trembles under the onslaught. He forgets to tally up how much time has passed since Kofuku came out here. An hour maybe. Two, just as easily.

The outline of a human figure appears, and although it is misshapen and warped through the turbulent weather, he recognizes it. Yukine stands up abruptly, knocking over one of the cups of cold tea.

"You're back," he says, as soon as Yato is near enough to hear him.

Yato nods. His clothes and hair are plastered stickily to his body. He walks up onto the porch, dripping all over and looking about as dignified as a dishrag.

"Yeah," he says croakily.

He's been crying—Yukine sees that now. The realization is accompanied with a surge of horrified sympathy. He went away. He did it alone—probably to avoid troubling anyone else.

His anxious, overbearing shinki, for instance.

"Now, let's go," Yato says, preceding his words with a cough to clear his blocked throat.

Yukine doesn't move. He's so accustomed to reading the god's mood swings—even now, when Yato has really _not_ been Yato for some time—that this emptiness is truly frightening. It's almost like there really is nothing left there, inside his head.

Nothing at all.

"Go—where?"

The question leaves his mouth in a near-squeak. Yukine's heartbeat collides with the rhythmic drive of the rain—and he's not sure which of the two echoes with such monstrous volume.

Yato brings a hand up to his cheek, rubbing it mechanically. When his hand comes away, he seems vaguely surprised to see that it's wet.

The rain is starting to let up.

"Away."

/

Fifteen minutes later, Kofuku comes back to the porch.

She finds nothing there except two cups of cold tea. One of them is overturned, dripping in colorless rivulets between the wooden slats of the floor.

/

It happens little by little—stitch by popping stitch—the seams that had been sewn closed by Hiyori's sacrificial act begin to open up again. Through them come the shadows: darker and greater than any cast by clouds.

 _/ November /_

During the first month, nothing seems to change much. There are some recurring problems with ayakashi, but nothing more than the usual.

Bishamon writes these exact words in her report, and receives a commendation from the heavens, which she pushes across her desk in aggravation.

"I did nothing," she hisses.

Kazuma opens his mouth, as though to attempt contradicting her. Then he shuts it again, and looks away.

 _/ December /_

Another month passes. Yato's phone—which he left behind on the pillow of his futon—rings, and rings, and rings.

At last, Daikoku picks it up, his nerves shredded under the constant shrilling.

"The hell you want?"

The unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line stutters an apology, then says:

 _*You…don't sound like…I'm sorry, I was just wondering—is Yato around?*_

"Who is this?"

 _*This is Iki Masaomi.*_

Daikoku stiffens at the family name.

"…And you want to talk to Yato?"

 _*Um. Yes? Who are you?!*_

"His pissed-off landlord."

 _*Oh.*_

Befuddled silence. Daikoku sighs.

"He's not here. Hasn't been for a while."

Kofuku walks into the room, her eyebrows pinched and curious as she observes the one-sided conversation. Daikoku holds a finger up to her, listening to Masaomi's reply.

 _*Well…okay. It's just that things are looking an awful lot like they did—you know—before. I don't know if you understand what I'm trying to say? It's pretty weird.*_

"You're talking about ayakashi?"

 _*Oh! Great, you do know.*_

"What about them?" Daikoku asks, keeping his voice steady.

 _*Just—that a bunch more people can see them now. Not just me. And…well. The point is, it's causing some pretty big problems.*_

"Problems like what?"

Kofuku scrambles out of the room, and comes back with a map and a pen. Plopping down on the floor, she begins circling on the map left and right. Daikoku watches her with his ear still to the phone.

 _*Um. Not sure if you'd consider citywide panic to be a problem…? Not everyone's as used to seeing monsters as I am.*_

Masaomi laughs weakly. Daikoku pinches his nose and exhales slowly through his mouth.

"Thanks. I'll pass this along to Yato."

 _*Along with his eviction notice? Ha, ha.*_

"What?"

 _*You said you were his pissed-off landlord—?*_

"Oh…right. Yeah."

There's silence from the other end of the line. Daikoku doesn't mention anything about Hiyori, especially since her brother doesn't seem anywhere near bringing it up.

Finally, he hears a sigh.

 _*Well, uh. Thanks…*_

"Daikoku."

 _*Daikoku. Thank you.*_

He hangs up, letting the phone drop from his fingers back onto the empty futon.

Kofuku is still silently circling on the map, until she at last finishes with a little flourish and twirl of the pen. It spins out of her grip to skitter across the floor.

"It'll be hard to tell Yatty anything—unless he comes back," she says, looking at the two dozen marked places on the map. Her falsely cheerful tone is high and brittle.

In his silence, Daikoku agrees.

/

"I don't understand," Kazuma says. The first crop of small new vents, predicted by Kofuku's eerily accurate augury, has already been put to swift and brutal annihilation by Bishamon. However.

"Wasn't it already decided that if Iki Hiyori gave herself up, the vents would return to their normal state?"

Bishamon pauses before saying:

"For a time."

Kazuma doesn't ask for clarification. But she can tell he would like to, and so does not force him to wait.

"She bought us a few weeks. That is all. Now, not only are vents starting to re-open, but other humans have gained an ability to see denizens of the Far Shore."

Abruptly, she clasps her hands tightly against each other on top of her desk. The veins stand out, making her skin look paper-thin and breakable.

"Consequently, the vicious cycle of panic and ignorance brings more ayakashi into existence. Then, even _more_ vents open."

Out of the corner of her eye, Kazuma pushes his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. She wonders if he is just hiding his face from her.

"So…it really didn't do anything," he states quietly. "She really did that for nothing."

"Yes. And Yato knew it."

"Then why the hell did they hold a colloquy?!"

Kazuma's outbursts are extremely rare, and even this one is moderated by his exemplary control. But she can tell, as she stares at her own clenched, stark-white fists—his tone is shaking with fury.

"What was all that nonsense about 'sacrificing one human to save thousands?' Is heaven really _that_ ignorant?"

It would be poor judgment for her to poison any of her shinki against the decisions of heaven, but Bishamon cannot muster an argument. What happened to the Iki girl was an evil misstep—an eternal stain on the gods' divine vow to protect humanity. It was a crime that she will do everything in her power to prevent from ever happening again.

She still hopes that, wherever he is now, Yato remembers her advice. Until he puts her to rest—the creature who was once the girl he loved—Bishamon doubts he will ever stop walking the razor's edge between grief and insanity.

At her side, Kazuma still mutters in stricken disbelief:

"It did nothing. It did _nothing_ …"

As much as she wants to contradict him, she cannot.

 _/ January /_

Midwinter arrives, and with it comes a steady uptick in the number of calls to Yato's phone. It buzzes and buzzes, voicemails piling up under a climbing red number. The urgent color blinks faster with each new message.

Kofuku listens to a couple of them while Daikoku is busy elsewhere, and her chin trembles. These aren't people calling for the services of a delivery god.

Yato's old customers want him back.

 _/ February /_

On the outskirts of Tokyo, sleet pours from the sky in a steady torrent. Against this bleak backdrop, a vent coughs open, spitting a few walleyed, confused-looking ayakashi into the deluge.

 _Cold…cold! It's so cold—_

There's a flash of blue—twin arcs of devastating light—and the creatures whisper out of existence as quickly as they arrived.

"No. It wasn't any of them," says a dull voice, in response to a question only its owner can hear.

After a brief pause, a smaller shape materializes next to the sword-wielder.

"We'll keep looking?" it asks.

"Of course."

There's another, longer silence as the two take shelter under the sleet-swollen awning of a closed shop.

"You didn't have to stick around for this part," says the taller one, once they're protected from the elements.

He's met with a glare of absolute, withering offense from his companion, who crosses his arms tightly over his thin chest, trying not to look as pathetically chilly as he is.

"And I didn't think you could be any more of a dumbass, but somehow you keep outdoing yourself."

No response. Finally, the younger boy lets go of some of his affront. He sighs.

"If you ever thought I was going to let you use a nora to free Hiyori, then you really are stupid."

The other hesitates a moment, before setting his hand softly on the boy's shoulder.

"Right again you are, kid. My mistake."

Is it the hand that trembles, or the shoulder it rests on?

"I only—I didn't really want it to have to be you…that does it to her, Yukine."

There's a small sniff. The boy scrubs a hand over his eyes, before saying:

"I just want to help. Let me keep trying to help,"—then, much quieter—"…please."

The hand on his shoulder squeezes its grip slightly. Then it lets go, swinging back to hang limp at its owner's side. He looks out from under the awning at the still-falling sleet. Slick, mushy piles of it are starting to build up on the pathway, making travel by any means other than foot difficult.

"Sure. We'll keep looking when this passes."

Another brief silence.

"Hey, Yato."

"Hm?"

"She wants this, right?"

It sounds like a question that has been asked before—although it never really has. Not aloud.

"She would have."

The wet slush of falling sleet nearly drowns out the quiet response. And the yearning—the heartbroken resignation in those three words is so, so very much worse than a denial.

 _/ March /_

The wind pulling softly at Tsuyu's sleeves holds the first notes of an early spring.

In the Michizane shrine, she gives glancing attention to the wall loaded with requests for the scholar god, searching for the ones that bear the most import—requests worthy of a god as popular and busy as her master. Her gaze drifts over them, skimming impartially over the prayers that clink and jostle each other.

Continuing her routine inspection, Tsuyu suddenly pauses over a plaque, her lips parting in mild surprise. After a few moments of confusion, she moves past it. Seconds later, her eyes land on another plaque.

 _Again._

A few more steps—

 _There, too…_

Perhaps it's a coincidence—but, perhaps—

She gathers the plaques, seven or eight in total, and carries them to Tenjin later that day. He looks over them, and his mouth quirks in a slight smile.

"Fascinating."

/

Kofuku is watering their earliest plants when Daikoku comes over to her, an expression of utter disorientation on his face. He's holding something in his hands—several somethings, actually.

"These were sitting out front," he tells her, extending the items toward her for inspection. Kofuku stares.

Prayer requests.

"Since when do _we_ get these?" he asks.

She picks up one of the plaques by its thin string, examining it as it swings gently from her fingers.

Then, she drops the half-full watering can straight onto Daikoku's toe.

/

"Kazuma, you don't find this strange?" Bishamon asks, indicating the odd wording of the prayers that have cropped up in eight of her branch shrines. Picking up the nearest one, she hands it to him.

 **If there are gods, they have abandoned us, or they have become monsters themselves. That's the only explanation I can find for why these horrible presences have suddenly appeared everywhere. To whoever answers this, or even sees it—if you exist—I only wish for a return to a normal life. For me, and for everyone else.**

"I find it creepy," he states, handing it back to her with a slight shudder. "And more than a little blasphemous."

"Not all of these are like that one," she says, her eyes flicking over the dozen or so plaques on her desk. "But they do contain variations of the same message."

Kazuma picks up another.

"These aren't your usual requests."

"I know," she says quickly, and in some frustration. The frustration is not directed at him. Bishamon is not accustomed to feeling useless.

"I've spent the whole winter barely keeping up with closing these little, pestering vents—I have not had a chance to take care of any of my normal duties," she bursts out suddenly. "Kazuma, these people need help! They need their ties to the Far Shore cut, in vast numbers—and I do not have that ability."

He gives her a shallow smile.

"You've singlehandedly held a small apocalypse at bay for the last three months, Veena. Give yourself some credit."

She shakes her head slowly.

The winter has been hard—harder, and colder, and longer than any Bishamon would ever care to relive. But, despite the blindness of heaven—despite her seeming solitude in the face of a phantom-drowned city—she knows Yato never left.

"No…no. I do not think it has just been my work," she says musingly.

"Let's talk about these requests then," Kazuma says, all business, and her attention snaps back to him. "Specifically, what in heaven's name they might mean."

Bishamon opens her mouth, then shuts it. She is at a loss to explain to him the… _hollowness_ of these requests.

Hollowness is the right word—and also, not quite. A god knows when a prayer belongs to them. Requests possess a unique warmth, reaching from the human sender to the one who receives.

None of these requests have that warmth.

Which means, these are not her prayers. They have simply been left at her shrines for lack of an alternative.

So…who _are_ these prayers meant for? Bishamon racks her brain, and comes up dry. The words on the nearest request stagger like drunken stick figures down the plaque's surface.

 **If there are gods, they have abandoned us.**

Fitting—if so—that these prayers are reaching for a god who does not seem to exist.

/

"Another patrol?" Kuraha asks her later. There is some worry in his voice as he witnesses the blue crescents under her eyes, the slightly bent curve of her usually straight spine.

"If it is twilight, then yes."

"Where are we going?" he asks.

"The crater."

Kuraha nods, and transforms in a flash of roaring light.

Bishamon arms herself lightly—in Aiha's armor, and taking only Kinuha as a sidearm—despite her exemplar's caution. Something tells her tonight's patrol will not be as difficult as its colder predecessors.

Besides, there is a taste of warmth in the air—something gentle, that adds a sweeter note to winter's harsh voice.

/

 _It still doesn't look good, my lady_ , says Kuraha.

"No, it doesn't," she agrees. They're all seeing the swirling mass of gloom that hangs over the whole of Tokyo like a cloud of breathing ash. The corrupted spirits' effect on the human population has manifested in a rapid upswing of crime, suicide, and overall misery. The fact that many more people can now actually _see_ the ayakashi is not helping matters.

And no matter how many she kills, there are a hundred thousand more waiting to prey on the helpless population. This is how it has been for months—it is not the explosive violence that preceded Hiyori's sacrifice—but rather more of a sluggish crawl into despair.

"I hope you're feeling this," Bishamon mutters, making sure her voice is beneath the hearing of her shinki. She aims the invective toward heaven.

They set off, and Kuraha's speed brings them quickly to the location of the crater. Bishamon is in the habit of checking it frequently—just in case it decides to blast open again.

This time, however, she thinks her lion may—for the first time ever—have misread her directions.

 _Hmm,_ Kazuma says in vague unease, scanning the odd sight ahead of them.

Within an entire half-kilometer radius of the crater, there is not a single ayakashi to be seen. Chouki's crystal-sharp vision confirms this. The thick, ash-black cloud of negativity splits neatly around the crater's circumference, leaving an unsullied dome of slate gray sky.

The area that used to be the park is still just as ruined as ever. The barren ground pitches in toward the center, with vast swathes of turf uprooted every which way, and trees lying across each other at crazy angles. It's unsurprising that humans have continued to steer clear of this area, since it has for so long carried the bitter aftertaste of ayakashi gloom.

Up until she had last seen it, which was only a few days ago, this location had been the center of it all.

With her shinki's wordless confusion mirroring her own, Bishamon lands at a good distance from the crater's edge. This calmness—this eye in the center of an endless storm—is so very unprecedented that she almost wishes she'd brought another weapon with her. The silence should not be setting her on edge.

Yet, while the stillness is strange—there is an odd tranquility to it as well. She notices this at once.

She also notices: she is not alone.

 _Careful, my lady_ , Kuraha warns as Bishamon dismounts.

"I will be," she responds easily, keeping her eyes locked on the only other person in the vicinity. The figure stands at the very lip of the crater, facing the opposite direction from where Bishamon has landed. Whoever it is still has not turned around, nor given any other indication of movement.

"I don't think this is an enemy."

She scans the horizon, which looks uncommonly clear, then turns back to the lion.

"Please stake out a perimeter, and keep guard until I call for you."

Kuraha casts a skeptical glance at the distant figure. Then he huffs, bounding away to circle the area. She watches him until he's completely out of sight.

Bishamon turns back to the stranger.

The white-clad figure is of about average height, with long, loose hair. Even from the back, it's clear from stature and shape to be female. Whoever it is still has not turned around, but continues staring straight ahead over the top of the crater with the immovability of a statue.

Bishamon walks closer, not bothering to make her approach silent. She doesn't want her arrival to be an unpleasant surprise. At the distance of about ten yards, she halts. The stranger still has not turned toward her.

"Hello there," she tries, in greeting.

The strange girl stiffens at the sound of Bishamon's voice. She shakes her head a little, as if trying to dislodge cobwebs.

Then, she puts both her hands up to her temples, and the sleeves of the white robe slip down from wrist to elbow. Bishamon catches an unobstructed glimpse of her right arm. All the way from elbow to fingertip, it is stained the color of an old bruise.

Corruption. Her teeth snap together.

"I'm…sorry."

Bishamon's breath catches. The female voice, though soft, and rather pleasant, is completely jarring.

 _This isn't right—this can't be happening—_

The girl turns around fully, pushing her long hair aside with the hand covered in blight. The movement at last reveals her face.

 _It is!_

Her own surprise, coupled with that of her shinki, is so strong that Bishamon nearly finds herself blurting a name out loud. She bites her tongue—but not soon enough.

Not before the rest of her question slips out.

"—Yato succeeded? He purified you after all?!"

Bishamon clamps her teeth shut again, scolding herself fiercely for her thoughtless words. Still, she holds her breath, waiting. Waiting.

The girl's face—Iki Hiyori's face, down to the last eyelash, the last pale freckle—smooths from consternation into harmless, bewildered blankness. Her eyebrows push together in an apologetic expression over eyes that are clear. Perfectly, blissfully void.

"I'm sorry. Yato…who is that?"


	23. wishes

The girl with Hiyori's face waits patiently for an answer to her question. Instead of giving a response, Bishamon's eyes flit down to the mottled darkness covering her arm. There is no mistaking the blight—nor the fact that, if this really is Hiyori's dead spirit, she will never be a usable shinki.

 _You are going to name her._

Kazuma says it with a trace of concern.

"If I name her now, I can offer her protection," Bishamon reminds him, speaking quietly. "Later, if…circumstances change, I will of course revoke my claim."

 _That makes sense,_ he allows, still hesitant.

Bishamon's hand extends, two fingers straight and shining with the warm luminescence of an ungiven name.

"My name is Bishamonten. Here, relinquish thy name in death, and become my serv—"

She cuts off abruptly. Her arm gives a sudden shudder. Then, she lowers it.

 _What is wrong?_ Kazuma asks, his tone sharp.

Bishamon's brow furrows. "I am not sure."

She had reached out for the soul of a dead girl, but there was nothing there. Or rather, there _was_ something-something that she had no power to name.

The two of them regard each other silently, across the gap of about ten yards.

Bishamon is the first to speak.

"Who are you?"

The girl stays quiet for a moment, then looks down at her own feet, her expression crestfallen.

"I was kind of hoping _you_ could tell me."

The girl's eyes squeeze shut, and she puts her hands to her temples again, rubbing them. The sleeve of her robe slips down her arm, and Bishamon sees it again.

There's no mistaking that her arm is blighted, but it doesn't seem to bother her. Her wrinkled brow is due to concentration, rather than pain.

"You do not know your name?" she asks.

The girl shakes her head forcefully, still keeping her eyes tightly shut and rubbing her head.

Bishamon tries to make sense of it. If this is Hiyori's returned spirit, she should be doubled up in pain because of the blight. On top of that, she would not be questioning her own identity.

Dead spirits do not think about their own existence-their identities before they left the Near Shore. They are supposed to behave like newborns. Unquestioning, uncurious.

Bishamon decides to tell the truth.

"The human who wore the same face as you was named Iki Hiyori. She sacrificed herself to the ayakashi, in the very place where you stand, in order to save her friends and loved ones. Her soul was corrupted, and her physical body left empty."

The girl's eyes pop wide open again, and the wrinkles in her forehead smooth out.

"Yes. I do remember that," she murmurs, almost to herself.

"You remember this happening?" Bishamon asks.

"I...remember. I remember all of that happening to me."

Her chin trembles. Her eyebrows pull together in an expression of pain.

"That's all I remember though," she says, breathing slightly faster. "That's everything."

Bishamon walks toward her, ignoring the cautionary twinge of her shinki. Whether or not this really is Iki Hiyori, it is clear she is struggling with something.

Before she reaches her, a deafening crack cuts the silence in half. Along with it comes a sharp smell of ozone.

"Bishamonten," a strong voice intones. "Step away from that person."

Bishamon turns quickly.

There is, above and behind her, a small army of gods, all of them donned in the familiar white hoods of a subjugation force. Floating high off the ground, they look darker and more threatening than any storm cloud.

"No," she gasps.

The hooded figure at the vanguard is the first to move, waving a hand indifferently at Bishamon.

"Remove yourself, war god."

Bishamon's teeth snap together, her lips curling up.

"There really is not a low to which you will not stoop?!" she calls up to them. "I will fight you again before standing aside to watch an innocent be executed."

The nearest figure tilts its head to the side, mildly confused. There is a low, rushing murmur from the rest.

"Execution?" asks the figure, who is evidently the spokesman for the envoy. "Has there been any mention of an execution?"

Too furious to be surprised, Bishamon makes a rapid gesture toward the hooded army.

"This is obviously your subjugation force. You mean to attack this girl."

None of them respond, which she takes as confirmation.

"And where have any of you been while the people down here suffer?" she hisses, her eyes scorching the gathered hoods. "Are you finally deciding to take responsibility for the death and crime? How can you continue to call yourself gods-"

"The events you speak of are unrelated to our purpose here," the nearest hooded figure interrupts.

Bishamon's knuckles creak with the strain of her clenched fists, and from the effort to keep her fingers from twitching toward one of her weapons.

 _Unrelated._ Swine.

Before she can retort, a soft noise behind her makes Bishamon turn around.

The girl in white hasn't moved-except now her eyes stare up and past Bishamon, onto the gathered force of heaven.

"I don't think they've come to kill me," she says. "I think...they might be here just to look."

Bishamon's fingers find the handle of her whip. Heaven doesn't " _just look."_

"We are here for you," the spokesman confirms, clearly addressing the girl who looks like Hiyori.

Bishamon turns toward the convergence of gods again, biting her tongue. "I've told you, I _won't_ let you-"

"Let her speak."

The rumble from the gathering is unmistakably threatening. Bishamon's grip on the handle tightens.

"It's all right," says Hiyori's voice once again. This time when Bishamon turns to face her, she is smiling. "Don't worry about me."

She faces the envoy of gods. From where she stands, Bishamon can see that, whether consciously or otherwise, Hiyori has folded both hands behind her back.

"What do you want with me?" she asks.

The uneasy rumble from the hoods quiets to a static hum. The spokesman god tilts his hooded face down toward her.

"Newcomer, are you aware of your identity?"

Hiyori shakes her head.

"I don't think so."

"Then allow us to inform you: you have been reborn as a god."

Hiyori's entire body stiffens.

Without preamble, the spokesman continues:

"Normally, the initiation of a new god would take place in Heaven itself, but yours must occur under...special circumstances."

Hiyori's clasped hands have started quivering.

"Wait. Wait a moment."

She is clenching her hands together so tightly that her fingers have turned white. Bishamon darts her eyes uneasily between Hiyori and the others.

However, after a few breathless moments, Hiyori huffs in determination. She throws her head back to look the gathered gods straight on.

Bishamon's eyebrows go up.

"What do you mean, special circumstances?" she asks in a strong voice.

"The circumstances of your deification." The spokesman pauses. "Namely, the wishes that brought you back to life."

"What about them?"

"Wishes against Heaven. Prayers in defiance of the very faith that allows them. Pleas for retribution and violence. You have become the holy vessel of a bloodthirsty people, and we have reason to believe your current incarnation is a god of calamity."

In the silence after his words, a distant ayakashi shriek needles the air. Bishamon stares at the back of Hiyori's head.

 _A god of calamity._

"Would that be such a bad thing?"

The soft question sparks an eruption in the gods' envoy. Mutters of indignation and disgust spread from hood to hood. The spokesman holds up a hand, and the wave of agitation subsides.

"It is in Heaven's best interest to prevent the existence of another calamity god. If you _are_ one of these, we will strike you down without hesitation."

Bishamon cannot keep her silence any longer. She steps forward alongside Hiyori.

"Whether or not she is a god of calamity, the fault of these prayers lies squarely on the shoulders of Heaven. You cannot simply strike down what has been wished into existence by the people you claim to protect. If you had done your job and prevented all these disasters, there would be no need for any of your hypocritical posturing."

The mutters from the gods increase in volume.

"Do not forget yourself, Bishamonten," warns the spokesman.

Bishamon's mouth opens again to retort, when suddenly Kuraha's voice shouts in her head, tight with concern:

 _My lady, careful!_

Before she can look around, two ayakashi, each as big as an entire schoolbus, bear down on her and Hiyori. Kuraha appears behind the second ayakashi, sinking his claws into its flank, and it balks, roaring back at him. It snaps in his direction with teeth the size of battle-axes. Bishamon readies her whip and darts toward the nearest phantom, calling over her shoulder:

"Get out of the way, Hiyori!"

Bishamon dodges the lightning-fast swipes of the first ayakashi as it tries to pin her down and shake off Kuraha simultaneously. He rips his claws out of the shrieking beast, and Bishamon rolls under its body, launching herself off the ground to land on the lion's back. Once she's there, Kuraha tears into its neck, dispatching it in a shower of blood-colored sparks. Immediately, Bishamon looks for the other ayakashi to deal with it in the same way.

She and Kuraha both see it at the same time. The other ayakashi is standing quite still, staring with a thousand rolling eyes at Hiyori. It's a breath away from her face, but the girl hasn't moved an inch.

The ayakashi's entire body quivers like a bowstring. Kuraha's sides contract as he prepares to spring.

"Wait."

Bishamon isn't sure if the entire world has hushed, or if she's just imagining it.

Hiyori's mouth opens, she speaks something quietly. The ayakashi sinks down, seeming to shrink. Hiyori reaches her right arm out, and touches its head with two fingers extended. Her lips move one more time.

And then the ayakashi is gone, its existence sucked quietly into nothingness.

Hiyori still stands with her arm outstretched, two fingers pointing into empty air. In the minute of silence, Bishamon, her shinki, and Heaven's envoy stare in open disbelief.

After a second or so, Hiyori shakes her head. She blinks rapidly several times, as though coming out of a trance, and her arm drops to her side again.

Sensing the odd hush, she turns around, looking at Bishamon with wide, anxious eyes.

"Did I do something wrong?"

Instead of answering, Bishamon gestures at her marked arm.

"What is that?"

Hiyori looks down at herself in confusion, and holds up the arm in question, scrutinizing it. She pulls the sleeve of her robe up, nearly to her shoulder, and both she and Bishamon see that the blight fades into smooth skin a few inches above the elbow.

"I don't know," Hiyori says, pinching the stained skin with the fingers of her other hand. Bishamon winces. Merely looking at it is painful.

"How does it not hurt you?" she asks in disbelief.

Hiyori lets her arm drop, and the sleeve covers the blight again.

"Is it supposed to?"

"Yes," Bishamon replies. Dismounting, she walks forward to take Hiyori's sleeve gingerly. She lifts the blighted arm up without her own skin touching it.

"May I?" she asks.

Hiyori still looks bewildered, but she nods. With a single finger, Bishamon touches the darkened skin above Hiyori's wrist. She feels no burn, no hiss; her hand comes away clean.

"Is it bad?" Hiyori asks, looking, if possible, even more perplexed than Bishamon feels.

"I...don't know."

Hiyori's eyebrows pull together, her expression troubled.

"I'm sorry."

At that, Bishamon is sure it really is Hiyori. Only that kind, silly girl would apologize for causing an inconvenience with her own resurrection. Bishamon opens her mouth to say something reassuring, when a loud voice cuts in.

"Explain this."

Hiyori and Bishamon both jump, having almost forgotten that they aren't the only ones there.

"Have you already named a shinki?" the spokesman god asks. He sounds, for the first time, worried.

"N-no," Hiyori says.

"And your arm-"

"She's been blighted!" interrupts a strident voice at the back of the envoy.

"No," Bishamon breaks in. "It is not blight, or I would have been affected as well."

A different voice from the hooded crowd cuts in:

"She is still part-ayakashi! She can command them with that diseased hand! Did you see how it bowed to her?"

"We must strike her down! She is not only a calamity god, but a sorcerer!"

Bishamon snaps Jinki in midair, cutting over the confused noise with a harsh _crack!_ The crowd of hoods turns back to gaze down on her.

"Do you hear yourselves?! You are jumping to conclusions about something you know nothing about!"

The hooded spokesman seems to hesitate, swayed by the dissent of his colleagues. He turns away from the two on the ground, facing the group of shrouded figures.

"It is true that this new development is...troublesome."

Something bright blossoms near the middle of the cloaked crowd. A tall god pushes his way through, flames bursting from the tips of his knuckles.

"I know how to deal with 'troublesome'."

"Control yourself, Kagutsuchi!" One of the hooded figures, this one female, yanks the fire god back by his elbow. The rest of the envoy mumbles amongst itself, individual voices rising from the crowd to voice their opinions.

"She cannot be allowed to go free-not with _that_ kind of ability-"

"Calm down. She may have hidden a shinki already."

"But her _arm-_!"

"She deserves a chance to explain herself."

"Yes-she can easily do that from one of Heaven's prison cells."

The figure at the front of the rioting vanguard glances away from his cohorts to look back at the ground.

There is only an empty crater. No sign of Bishamon, her lion, or the nameless god with the blighted arm.

* * *

 **Sorry this took so very long to update! Like I said, travel and life has kept me from working on this to my satisfaction, but hopefully the final chapters will be quick to arrive. 3**


	24. expectation

"Do you think they'll chase us?" Hiyori asks, straining to be heard over the wind whipping past her ears.

"We have time," Bishamon calls back.

Hiyori has to hang on even more tightly as Kuraha bounds from rooftop to rooftop. Everything between her temples still feels suspended, underwater. A dull ache has begun pulsing behind her eyes.

Too much. Too much.

She squeezes her eyes shut.

"Where are you taking me?" she asks after a few more minutes have passed. She does not open her eyes, but Kuraha's trajectory feels vaguely familiar.

She must have come this way often, when she was alive.

 _When she was alive._

Something flutters unpleasantly in her chest.

 _A god of calamity._

"You really don't remember, do you?" comes Bishamon's voice, slicing through the noise within her.

"It's...foggy," Hiyori admits.

And out of that fog, stormy with half-memories and solid nightmares, she is trying to tease out the concrete realities of her past. The name Bishamon threw at her when they first met. _Yato._

As they fly over the city, the visible impact of the vents and ayakashi is a painful manifestation of Hiyori's own internal state. It is especially so above the urban areas, packed thick and black with hungry spirits and miserable humans. Her eyes linger on the gloom-choked streets.

Is this what she has supposedly caused? Is she a god who wastes?

Suddenly, a memory surfaces. Her breath stabs harshly at the bottom of her throat.

It is a memory of someone standing in front of her, covered in bruises and blight. He stares at her face, and his own looks very young.

"Hiyori...?"

In the memory, she looks at him and she smiles. She tells him he smells nice.

Then, she gives herself to the storm.

Bishamon feels Hiyori's arms around her waist tighten and tremble. She turns her face halfway to check on the girl.

Hiyori's head is bowed slightly forward. A silvery drop rushes across her cheek, past her ear, and the wind scoops it away.

She turns around again.

/

Kuraha lands with a soft _thud_ of paws in the yard. The surrounding area is miraculously free of ayakashi, except for a few tadpole-like creatures cautiously circling the boundary. They probably have the instinct to steer clear of the house's occupants.

Hiyori gasps. She slides off Kuraha's back immediately.

"Th-this is-"

The sliding door bangs open, and a curly pink head pokes around the doorframe.

"Bisha, is that you? Where did—"

The rest of the question gets sucked back down her throat in a sharp inhale. One hand smacks over her mouth, stifling a squeak.

Then, a bolt of bubblegum lightning rockets across the yard into Hiyori's arms.

"Hiyoriin-how-are-you-alive-oh-my-goodness-I'm-so-happy-how-did-you-survive-was-it-Bisha-did-Bisha-save-you-oh- _DAIKOKU-COME-OUT-HERE_ -what-were-you-doing-we-were-all-sure-you-were-gone-forever-oh-Hiyoriin-I'm-so-happy—"

The stream of ecstatic shrieking verges on total incoherence as she blows her nose into Hiyori's sleeve. Hiyori blinks down at her.

"Kofuku…?"

The pink-haired person sniffs wetly, still clinging to her arm. Hiyori feels like she's trying to throw off a heavy blanket in order to unearth the names and memories underneath.

"That's your name...right?"

Kofuku stares up at her, lower lip quivering.

"You don't remember me?"

Hiyori doesn't know how to answer. At that moment, Kofuku's eyes flicker downward, catching the sizeable stain on the arm around which she has wrapped herself. Her eyes pop open impossibly wider as she takes a quick step back.

"What's _that_?"

"A very good question," says Bishamon, giving Hiyori a searching look.

"Well...um," Hiyori says uncomfortably. "I think it...sends ayakashi away somehow. It makes them...I don't know..."

She puts her fingertips to her forehead, massaging the bridge of her nose as the storm swirls behind her eyes. "I don't know. Really."

Kofuku's mouth becomes a comically enlarged "O," and she stares from Hiyori, to Bishamon, back to Hiyori again.

"You can get rid of ayakashi without a shinki?"

Before Hiyori can respond, Daikoku comes out of the house.

"Apparently I can," she says several minutes later, once Daikoku sets her back down on the ground and has managed to get his deafening sobs under control.

"That's amazing!" Kofuku cheers, clapping her hands.

"It's _something_ ," Daikoku says, wiping his still-dripping eyes.

"It's dangerous," says a new voice, and Hiyori jumps as a man materializes right next to her.

Glasses. Quizzical forehead. Uniform.

"Kazuma!" she says, feeling considerably more confident in her memory.

"Hiyori. It's so good to see you back."

A genuine smile breaks across Kazuma's face as he says it, but a shadow of worry lurks beneath his warmth.

"Dangerous how?" she asks quickly.

"You saw how Heaven responded," he says. "They won't let you simply move around as you please. You threaten them."

"How? I didn't do anything!"

"They obviously think you _could_."

Hiyori's hands tremble. _Execution. A god of calamity._

A god of calamity.

Blue eyes.

Hiyori shakes her head.

"What should I do?" She swallows thickly. "I don't want to die."

She's surprised by how true it is. She really doesn't want to die. Not again.

Not before saying how sorry she is.

"You won't die."

Hiyori looks up from her hands, startled by the determination in Bishamon's voice. Kazuma pushes up his glasses, his eyebrows drawing together in mild disapproval.

"Well...we can do as much as we are able," he says cautiously. "It's likely that once Heaven regroups, the first location they will approach is Veena's house. After all, she _did_ make a bit of a spectacle-"

"Because they are a bunch of ill-mannered, cowardly, fearmongering, quivering fools-"

"So I've put you all at risk," Hiyori says, abruptly cutting off Bishamon's tirade.

"Well…" Kazuma begins uncomfortably. He ignores a glare from Daikoku that could melt steel. "Obviously you didn't _mean_ to come back from the near-dead and give Heaven the scare of the century-"

"- _a deserved one_ -" Bishamon interjects.

"-but, here you are," he finishes.

Kazuma's expression begs Hiyori not to hold his honesty against him, but she's too busy wrestling with herself to care.

Here she is, indeed. _A god of calamity._ That is what they called her. Hiyori is sickened with the wrongness of it. The answer is lurking very close to her, along with her memories. She feels like she's missing a leg-or her lungs.

Kofuku chooses that moment to say the worst thing of all. Or maybe the best thing of all. Hiyori is having some difficulty telling the difference.

"What about Yato and Yukine?"

Kofuku's voice is a forlorn echo. The question goes unanswered.

Hiyori remembers then, and wishes she couldn't. She left them by her own choice. She had broken her promise, and then she had broken herself, and she had, of course, broken them along with her.

What an awful human she had been.

What an awful god she had become.

"Hiyoriin?"

Kofuku's warm, small hand reaches up to pat her chin and wipe something off.

"They'll be happy to see you, Hiyoriin. No matter what you are. I promise they will."

"Are they...all right?" Hiyori asks haltingly. A lot of disagreeable fluids are leaking from her face and doing some interesting things to her voice. The question comes out very wet.

Kazuma clears his throat in an uncomfortable, masculine sort of way while studiously looking off into the distance. He says something quietly to Bishamon, and she seems to agree with him. He becomes an earring again, and then Bishamon is on Kuraha's back, leaping off into the clouds.

"What...where are they...?" Hiyori sniffles faintly, still allowing Kofuku to pat her dry. Daikoku looks up after the disappearing lion.

"Back to her house. They're going to try to send the subjugation force on a wild goose chase. Luckily, the last place they'd want to look is here, what with my mistress's reputation and all."

Kofuku grins proudly. Hiyori blinks, still unable to shape her thoughts around any distinct questions in order to ask them.

Daikoku points warily to Hiyori's marked arm.

"What's going on there?"

She looks down at it, reeling a little from the twist in the conversation.

"Oh…um..."

"Hiyoriin can get rid of ayakashi just by thinking about it!" Kofuku says, excitedly and erroneously.

"Well, I have to touch them," Hiyori corrects, relieved that this, at least, she is sure of. "And say something. I don't know what I say...it just... _happens_. They ask me to do it."

Her mouth snaps shut. That last bit had surprised her, until she said it aloud. Now it makes perfect sense. It is her job.

Kofuku pouts. Daikoku scowls. Neither of them knows what to make of her.

She can relate.

"Yato," Hiyori says purposefully. She's stupefyingly grateful the name doesn't trigger tears this time. "Is he all right? Is Yukine all right?"

"We haven't seen them," Kofuku says immediately. Then, more quietly: "We haven't _found_ them."

Relief bursts in Hiyori's chest, warm and rich and delightfully unexpected. They have not been _found_. Which is, of course, why she is here. She can find things.

Is this what she is, perhaps? A god who finds?

She draws a deep, thrilling breath into her lungs, and immediately understands why her mind has been so jumbled, so chaotic.

The air tastes. The atmosphere itself is such a glorious, appallingly complicated banquet that her mind had been drowning in it.

The air _tastes_.

It is so much richer than it ever was to her half-ayakashi senses. Categorizing the flavors is the work of less than a second. Bishamon's, Kazuma's, Kofuku's, Daikoku's, all sort themselves out in her mind, and she filters through the soot and grime of the city, the watery freshness of trees and plants, searching…searching…

Is she a god who searches?

Hiyori's feet lightly carry her to the top of a nearby fence. She hears someone call after her, but she is caught by the wind already and cannot answer. Buried in the stench of ayakashi and the black, oily taste of the city, and the warmth of sun and trees and the might and metal of the subjugation force and the wild, purple soul-scent of many, many humans, she searches.

There.

 _Yes._

/

Next to an obviously brand-new vent, she finds them. They are surrounded by an impossible number of ayakashi.

They are badly outnumbered, two to two hundred. They aren't worried. In fact, Yato seems to be enjoying himself hugely. He pivots, dodges, strikes. Sekki's blades are as thin and bright as the tail of a comet, and seemingly aimed for thirty targets at once.

In half a blink, a third of the attacking ayakashi have been reduced to showers of ruby light scattered in the windless air.

Dragging her eyes from the deadly ballet next to the vent, Hiyori briefly ponders the fact that several ayakashi now have their eyes on her. One of them approaches.

It is a monster born of hunger; Hiyori knows this by the gnarled ache in her own stomach as she looks into its eyes. It has four long, gashed grins, all of which are drooling obscenely. _Nice smell, nice smell_.

"You, who are born from the human spirit," Hiyori says. She lifts her arm toward the ayakashi's nearest face.

"You, who are condemned by gods."

Two fingers stretch toward the monster's quivering jowls. Almost a naming. Almost, but not.

"Rest, you require."

It drops to its blunt knees. The ground shivers under Hiyori's bare feet.

"Rest, I grant you."

The ayakashi leans toward her, as docile as a cat.

" _Recede."_

The ayakashi winks out of existence, a candle silently extinguished.

Because this is what she is, after all: a god who cures.

/

As Hiyori keeps snuffing out ayakashi, she also keeps an eye on the battle raging nearly inside the vent itself. She realizes something, and her stomach lurches.

Yato is happy.

His eyes light up with vicious joy, reflecting each new crimson pattern Sekki carves in the air. Another explosion of red, and a smile bursts across his face. She can see it even from this distance.

He is an animal. He is terrible. And it is her fault.

Her feet bog down with horror. Hiyori doesn't see the nearest ayakashi shake free of its stupor. She doesn't see its million spinning, bloody eyes all focus on her. She doesn't see it rear back, teeth bared. She turns-

" _Oh!"_

The creature shatters into shards of itself, sliced through with a single precise stroke.

Her rescuer lands silently, dropping into a low crouch. He lands with his back toward Hiyori, and she sees the rush of wind through his hair. She sees the charged twist of his shoulders after a successful strike. The double blades of his weapon are still held aloft.

"Be more careful next time," he says, after a long pause.

His fingers tighten around the sword-hilts as he straightens up again. The area is free of ayakashi, and as if it too knows the fight is over, the vent shrinks down, constricting its edges inward until it seals with a hiss of gas and the heavy _boom_ of earth against earth.

"Nice job, Yukine," Yato murmurs.

The idea of him turning around, of recognizing her after doing _that_ , is so shockingly beyond anything she had envisioned that Hiyori's voice abandons her.

"Thank you," she manages to whisper.

Yato, still facing away, scratches the back of his neck.

"A tip for you," he says good-naturedly. "Don't take your mid-day stroll near any portals to hell, and you can easily avoid this sort of situation."

He turns. In the quarter-second before his brain catches up with his eyes, Hiyori almost sees the flippant, jaunty, genuine Yato.

It makes his strangled noise, and the raw expression on his face, infinitely, infinitely worse.

"Hi," she says.

Yato does not say anything.

He keeps not saying anything until she starts to wonder if he still can.

Hiyori takes a tentative step toward him, and the tendons in his arms jump as he tightens his grip on Sekki. She stops.

"Um. Remember me?" she asks, searching for what a smile should feel like. Her mouth is stiff and unwilling.

His Adam's apple bobs frantically as he swallows. Twice.

"What," Yato says. "The hell."

"It's-it's me, Hiyori..." she says stupidly, and trails off. She hadn't gotten past this moment in her planning. She hadn't really done much planning.

"No," he says, just as stupidly. "No you're not."

She doesn't have any more words. At least, none of the ones she needs.

And then he is right there, right in front of her, so violently present that his closeness is all she can feel on her face and in her nose and against her skin-

"Hiyori is _gone_."

He is screaming it into her face.

"I saw her go."

He does something strange with his mouth. It's curling up, straining in on itself. She recognizes it as the moment right before a sob.

"I watched them bury her."

He is sobbing now, loudly and unattractively. Her own eyes feel crowded.

"She's gone. You are _not_ Hiyori. Not anymore."

His face is a ghastly thing, distorted with rage and loss and grief. Hiyori tastes salt on her lips when she opens her mouth to speak. And then she finds she can't, because she does not know what to tell him to make it better.

These are not the circumstances for truth.

And then his arms are around her, his face pressed messily into the crook of her neck. His tears are scalding, falling onto her robes, rolling down her skin beneath them.

Then-shocking after the hot tears-Hiyori detects a whisper of ice at the nape of her neck.

"Yato…"

She exhales the rest of her air, holding deathly still.

"Prove it."

Hiyori licks her dry lips, waiting. Sekki's teeth tremble, a breath away from her artery.

"Prove it," Yato rasps out again, his voice tortured. "Or I'll have to release you."


	25. yen

**_yen (noun):_**  
 ** _1\. the basic monetary unit of Japan._**  
 ** _2\. a longing or yearning_**

* * *

 _Prove it._

Many seconds pass. Hiyori's legs start to tremble; her blood screams from lack of air, but she doesn't dare breathe.

"Yato," she whispers. It comes out airless, inaudible. She turns her head a bare millimeter, and Sekki's scalpel-sharp blade stings along her throat like frostbite. She can almost _feel_ Yukine's distress at being held in such a position. As if in response to her thought, the sword begins to quiver.

Her lungs are at their limit. She sucks in a slow breath—and the smell bursts on her. It's that wonderful scent, her favorite scent, and nothing about it has changed except its sheer intensity. Hiyori's heart does a sudden, happy flip, despite her situation.

"Do you remember when I said I liked how you smell?" she asks.

A slight tremor passes through Yato's body—enough to send a shiver through Sekki. Hiyori swallows, takes a breath.

"I didn't really say much about it at the time," she says. "Because…it was embarrassing, and it didn't feel…I don't know. It didn't feel like telling you would change anything, so I kept it to myself. But Yato, it's my favorite smell in the world."

The sword is resting on her shoulder now. It isn't against her throat. Hiyori lifts her arms, slowly, slowly, and brings her hands to either side of his face. Her thumb strokes his cold cheek.

"Whenever I smell it," she whispers, "I know I can find you. I know I'm safe. That's why it's my favorite."

Yato's face is still pressed against the side of her neck. Hiyori's thumb runs along his cheekbone, coming away wet. Her other hand cups the back of his neck, combing through the soft, short hairs.

"I'm sorry I left. Thank you for saving me. Thank you."

His arm around her waist convulses suddenly. Hiyori jumps at the clatter of metal against ground, but then he's hugging her too tightly, too desperately. Another burst of memory surprises her: she had always loved when he hugged her with a little too much enthusiasm. Those hugs always left her out of breath and with a few aching ribs. She had always wanted them to be longer.

"Sorry for doing that," she says thickly. "I'm really, really sorry for doing that—to both of you."

She's held up pretty well until now, but her eyes are blurry with hot tears. One streaks down her cheek. Then another.

Yato mumbles something under his breath, and the next second they're both nearly barreled over by Yukine, who appears on Hiyori's right side and immediately clutches her around the waist, sobbing quite unabashedly into her robes.

"Hiyori," he wails, face buried in her sleeve. "Why did you _do_ that?! Why couldn't you have…you could have—"

His voice is lost in an incomprehensible string of wet, garbled sobs. Hiyori chokes out a laugh and slides an arm around his shoulders. She pulls them both closer.

She missed them so, so very much, but she knows it cannot be quite the same as how they've missed her. They stand there for a long time, arms locked around each other. Except for Yukine's sniffles, everything is quiet. They have a lot more to talk about, but it can wait.

It can all wait.

* * *

 **A/N: *coughs into my sleeve* h aHA HEY GUYS WHAT'S UP**

 **you may be wondering why it took me half a year to write and publish a 500-word chapter, and to that i can only go ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯**

 **at any rate i hope you liked this chapter, at least it isn't a goddamn cliffhanger like the last one (wow i really am super sorry about that) but HEY one chapter left to go! (+ an epilogue, but shhh)**


	26. zenith

**_zenith (noun)_**

 ** _1\. the time at which something is most powerful or successful_**

 ** _2\. the point in the sky or celestial sphere directly above an observer_**

* * *

They go back together, a trifle bruised and tear-stained, but Hiyori is smiling so hard her face hurts.

"I just…I don't…" Yukine gives his head a quick shake, like a puppy drying its ears. "I just don't _get_ it, Hiyori. You came back as a—a what?"

"Um…" She pauses. This vein of conversation is starting to discomfort her. "I think…a god? That's what everyone else seems to think."

Yukine stares at her for a second. Then he shrugs.

"Well, as long as you're back, then I don't really care what you've turned into."

He won't let go of her left hand, gripping it so tightly her fingers begin to go numb. But neither he nor Yato have tried to touch her darkened right hand.

"I don't know if everyone else is going to feel the same way," Yato says from behind them. Hiyori turns her head to look at him over her shoulder. He smiles at her, and for a moment his face is full of joy. But she can see the worry hiding in the wrinkles of his forehead.

They arrive at home before long. Kofuku hauls them in through the door, before hugging each of them fiercely. Her face is urgent and anxious.

"We had some visitors," she says, finally letting go of Yukine, who clutches his ribs, wincing.

"Yeah," Daikoku interjects. "The subjugation force."

Yato stiffens behind her, and Yukine blurts out: " _Excuse_ me?"

"But—but, didn't you say they wouldn't want to come here?" Hiyori stutters.

Daikoku shakes his head. "They must really want to find you," he says. "And it's no secret you three haven't had trouble fraternizing with a god of poverty."

"They moved straight on from Bisha's place to ours," says Kofuku. Her eyes drift shut. "It wasn't fun. Those gods are…not nice."

Hiyori shivers. Kofuku's eyes snap open again, and she points an accusatory finger at her. "You've scared the panties off a lot of very important people, Hiyoriin."

Yukine shoots Hiyori a doubtful glance out of the corner of his eye.

"They were also very interested to learn if we'd heard where the two of you were," says Daikoku. Kofuku suddenly rounds on Yato.

"Speaking of which—you never called us! Not _once_ in all this time! Shame on you!"

She crosses her arms, pouting like a stormcloud. Yato ignores her. He takes a small step forward and his elbow brushes against Hiyori's. Her entire body warms at the small touch.

"And what did you tell them?" he asks, a hint of coldness under his voice.

"The truth," says Daikoku. "That the stupidest thing any of you could have done would be to come back here."

Yato chuckles. "Fair point."

"They were saying a lot of rude things," Kofuku says. She still eyes Yato with a wounded expression. "Apparently the angle they're taking is that the newest threat to their divine rule is a sort of… _abomination_ , who steals the power of ayakashi for herself by using a cursed right arm."

"Well, that didn't take long," Yato growls. Hiyori goes pale, and puts her right arm behind her back.

The five of them stand in silence for a long moment. Daikoku clears his throat.

"You should have enough time to get somewhere safe," he says. Kofuku nods, her eyes misting over. Yukine looks between the two of them.

"You mean we can't stay here?" he says. His eyes are wide, bewildered.

Kofuku's head droops. Hiyori thinks Daikoku might be fighting back tears at the hurt look on the boy's face.

"'It's not…'s'not safe," he grunts, swiping at his eyes with a sleeve. Kofuku pats his elbow. She smiles sadly at them.

"You'll come back here soon, right?" she asks. "As soon as you can?"

Hiyori's eyes blur. She takes a step forward, enfolding her friend in a tight embrace—escalating to near-suffocation once Daikoku wraps them both in his huge arms. Two more thumps indicate Yukine and Yato have been sucked into the group hug.

"As soon as we can," Hiyori whispers, patting Kofuku's messy pink head.

They change clothes, "borrowing" a pair of Kofuku's elbow-length gloves for Hiyori to cover her right hand, which would likely induce more than a few questions. The rest of their packing is light. Before they can leave through the back door, a sharp knock echoes through the house.

Kofuku shoves the three of them into the stairwell. Daikoku, eyes narrowed, slides the door open.

"It's just me," says a low, measured voice, and a pair of footsteps enters the house. As soon as the door slides shut again, Kofuku waves Hiyori, Yato, and Yukine out of hiding. Kazuma stands in the middle of the living room, polishing his glasses on his sleeve.

"Hello, you two," he says, nodding to them. His lips curve up. "It's been a while."

Yukine coughs, and Yato waves sheepishly. Kazuma's smile disappears.

"I need to talk to you. It will only take a moment."

/

Kazuma makes a discreet exit hardly ten minutes later. "I'll need to go there first," he tells them before leaving. "Just to make sure all is prepared."

Once he has gone, Hiyori takes Yato's sleeve, pulling him toward her. He looks down at her, questioning.

"I know it's not the ideal time, but…can we make a stop?" she appeals. "Just one. It'll be short."

Yato turns fully toward her, his mouth already forming a refusal. But after a second of deliberation, he closes his mouth again. He nods once.

"Actually…there's someone I've been wanting to visit as well," he says, grimly. For a moment, his face is very dark. Hiyori looks up at him in apprehension, but he forces a smile again.

"Come on," he says. "We should leave."

/

Two figures slide in through the unlatched window with ease. She already knows her parents are away from the house—things could really hitch if anyone but her brother were here. As they walk down the upstairs hallway, Sekki gleams at Yato's side. Just in case.

Hiyori sniffs the air. The odor is that of dry rot. There's more than just one ayakashi around here.

The first one lives in her old bedroom. It's shapeless, the color of mold, and hissing like a popped balloon. It mutters through sticky, tar-colored lips. _She was so young. She was young, and healthy, and she shouldn't have died._

She lays two fingers against its face and sends it away.

They go downstairs, where another one crouches on the kitchen counter. Even as her hand lifts, Hiyori hesitates. This one feels like it's already shrinking. It's about the size of a bullfrog, and croaking a single, unbroken moan.

In the next room over, they hear footsteps. Before Hiyori can react, Masaomi walks in. He stops short, one foot over the threshold, and makes a strangled noise.

"Huh…?"

The frog-ayakashi coughs, sputters, and collapses squishily onto the countertop. Hiyori looks at her brother.

"Hi," she says.

Five minutes later, the ayakashi is gone, the only residue of its existence an oily stain on the countertop. Masaomi rubs his temples, wearing an expression of complete bafflement.

"So. You're a god?" he asks. Hiyori nods.

"And you're… _not_ dead." She nods again, emphatically.

"And you can…kill…things like that?" He points at the stain where the frog ayakashi had squatted.

"Well," Hiyori corrects. "Not _kill_ , so much as…send them away."

Masaomi looks at Yato.

"She kills them," he says. Hiyori shoots him a glare.

"What?!" Yato's eyes widen innocently. "They make a little popping noise and disappear!"

"Anyway," she grumbles. "I needed to see you first. Before we leave."

Masaomi stops massaging his forehead. "You're leaving?" he asks flatly. "Right after you came back from the dead?"

Hiyori swallows. "Not forever. Just…temporarily. Until it's safe."

"What does _that_ mean?" Masaomi demands, but Yato shakes his head.

"We don't have time for this," he says. "Are you willing to help?"

"Yeah, sure, but—"

"Then leave prayers," Yato interjects. "Tell anyone else to leave them, too. It doesn't matter at which shrines—as long as they reach her."

Masaomi looks from Hiyori, to Yato, back to Hiyori again.

"You died," he says. His voice cracks. And suddenly Hiyori is hugging him, this brother who has been on the sidelines of her life for so long.

"Please don't do that again," he whispers. "I'll help however I can. Just— _please_ —stay safe. Okay?"

Hiyori nods. He squeezes her hard— _oof—_ then gives her three awkward pats on the back. It's how he always used to end their infrequent embraces. Over her head, Masaomi's eyes meet Yato's.

 _You have to do better, this time around._

Yato nods.

 _I will._

/

They walk through the shrine gate around the time the sun starts to sink behind the trees. Yato's eyes narrow into icy slits when a tall figure walks out of the shrine toward them.

"I hear congratulations are in order," Tenjin says as he approaches. He clasps his hands in Hiyori's direction, giving her a slight bow.

"How about you cut the cute shit, and skip to the part where you told Hiyori to throw herself into hell," Yato snarls. She hears a cracking noise and looks down to see his fists clenching and unclenching, as though they wanted to be holding invisible swords.

"I suggested no such thing," Tenjin says innocently.

"He didn't, actually," Hiyori asserts.

"You gave her some manipulative spiel about the vents being _her_ fault, didn't you? You fed her just enough information to make her think that—that _killing_ herself—"

"Yato," Hiyori interrupts, sternly. "He didn't."

She takes a few steps forward, so she is between the two of them. She removes the glove on her right hand, and holds her arm out toward Tenjin. His gaze lowers to it, taking in the mottled, purple blight covering the skin, and she feels a twinge of satisfaction at his obvious surprise.

"You said you thought my death wasn't the solution, and you were right," she says. "The choice I made with the knowledge I asked of you was entirely my own. That's the only reason I'm here—isn't it?"

One corner of Tenjin's mouth lifts.

"That's an interesting way of seeing it," he says. "Obviously, your connection to the ayakashi has something to do with your current form…but I suppose you could think of it that way. Your independence in taking on the form of a corrupted spirit actually resulted in quite the opposite. You were transformed into a purified vessel, ready to take on the role humans had already wished into existence for you."

Yato snorts. "Yeah, it's all very mystical and complex. I'm not through with you, old man."

Hiyori turns to look at him again. Anger and frustration push ridges over his eyebrows, and her stomach twists in pained sympathy.

"I was hoping you'd see," she says, quietly. "I hoped you'd see that this all started and ended with me. If you're going to be angry, then be angry at me."

Yato looks at her, and the rage on his face loosens into confusion.

Witnessing this exchange, Tenjin sniffs impatiently. Hiyori turns once again to face him, but takes a few steps backward so she stands next to Yato.

"And what about my being a god of calamity, or an 'abomination,' as Heaven likes to call me?"

Hiyori is surprised to hear how calm her voice is. However frightening the truth may be, she's already survived worse. Yato scoots closer to her, so their shoulders brush, and she allows herself half a smile.

After all, even a god of calamity can change.

Tenjin taps his chin. "I think 'abomination' is taking it a bit far," he says. "They tend to say that about anything that exposes their corruption or greed. And, as for the 'calamity' bit—it all depends on the wishes that woke your godhood. Were they disastrous and vengeful wishes? Or were they prayers for salvation, and righteous judgment?"

His eyes narrow, and he gives a small shrug. "As for me, I believe your new form is for you to decide—not Heaven."

Hiyori lowers her eyes to her right hand. Hesitantly, she touches her fingertips together. She can feel Yato's eyes on her.

"Well—now that everything's said and done," Tenjin says briskly, "I do still think it would have been simpler for you to just cut your ties with her, Yato. There was no telling whether the narrow path I pointed her toward would bear such successful results."

Yato's teeth grind together. Hiyori takes his sleeve with two of her fingers—just in case.

"So you decided to play a game of chance with her soul?" he growls.

Tenjin frowns distantly, turning his gaze back to Hiyori. He looks her over with that same appraisal he gave her when she came to him as a human, asking to know the gods' secrets.

"It was a risk," he admits. "But I had a feeling she would pass."

His eyes meet Yato's again. Despite being confronted with their cold, deadly blue, he gives a quizzical smile.

"There. Do you still wish to part my head from my shoulders?"

"I think it would feel really, _really_ nice," says Yato bitterly, though Hiyori notices with relief that the murderous aura around him is abating.

"Then perhaps you will have that pleasure at our next meeting," Tenjin says. He turns away, signifying the end of the conversation.

"But for now, I have many requests to attend to. Excuse me."

As the scholar god disappears back into his shrine, Hiyori looks at Yato. His jaw is still working, the muscles in his neck twitching under the stress. Reaching for his hand, she draws soothing circles over his knuckles. He looks down at their joined hands, and then at her face, and—slowly—his features relax.

She smiles at him.

"Let's go home."


	27. epilogue

A nighttime breeze whispers through the forest of plaques that hang in disorderly rows around the small shrine, setting them clattering against each other like teeth. Inside the shrine burns a miniature camp lantern. Three dark figures are huddled around it on roll-up mats.

"There's one left," Hiyori says, pulling a cheesy bun out of a plastic bag. Yato snatches it out of her fingers before she can blink.

"Well, _you're_ back to normal," grouches Yukine from his mat. He's nose-deep in a comic they picked up at the convenience store along with the food, angling the pages toward the camp lantern as he thumbs through it.

Yato mumbles something around the cheesy bun and ruffles Yukine's hair, earning himself a swat. Hiyori picks at her own food and watches them, a giggle stinging the corners of her lips.

Rebuffed by his shinki, Yato scoots backwards onto her mat. They sit there for a moment, cross-legged and avoiding eye contact. Hiyori clears her throat.

"How long can we stay here?" she asks, keeping her voice low enough so Yukine can't overhear.

"A few days," Yato answers. He licks the remains of the cheesy bun off his fingertips. "Then we'll hop to the next one."

"We'll need to repay Bishamon somehow," she muses, before Yato scoffs.

"She hardly needs these branch shrines." He drags a finger through the thick layer of dust that still blankets the corners of the small room, despite Kazuma's preparations. "If anything, we're doing _her_ a favor."

Yukine's nose droops into his comic, and he jerks awake again with a start. It's cold in the little shrine, but Hiyori can feel the suggestion of heat from Yato's body. She clears her throat.

"How…are you?" she asks hesitantly.

Yato turns his head to look down at her. Avoiding his eyes, Hiyori reaches for the blanket at the bottom of the mat and tugs it around her shoulders. The silence wraps around her like a noose.

"I'm happy," he answers. Her heart drops in relief.

"Even though we're here?" She nudges her chin outward, indicating their decrepit surroundings.

"Yes."

"And Heaven wants us dead?"

"I've been there before."

"And the world is still awful?"

"It's survived this long."

"And I have a weird, deadly hand that gets rid of ayakashi?"

Yato laughs. Yukine, asleep with his head on page 42, flinches at the noise and rolls over.

"I'm happy about your hand," he says, honestly. "I'm happy about all of you."

Hiyori still can't look at him. Ever since their reunion, new memories have been getting clearer by the minute, but she's having a hard time trusting them. Some seem too good to have been real.

"I wish…" she starts to say, then stops abruptly, chewing on her lower lip. So much has changed—so much has been complicated by absence and sorrow.

Yato makes a quiet noise in the back of his throat, and she finally looks at him. His eyes glow at her, reflecting and magnifying the light of the camp lantern. She is a moth, caught in them.

"I still take wishes, Hiyori," he says. His breath ghosts over her eyelids, and she shivers.

"I don't have five yen," she whispers.

"We can work something out."

He dips his head, kissing her right cheek, lingering there so the tip of his nose sweeps the top of her cheekbone. Hiyori closes her eyes.

"Okay."

He kisses her again, this time between her eyebrows, and she inhales the wonderful scent of his neck.

"I wish…" she says.

He kisses, very lightly, her jaw beneath her ear. Her grip on the blanket loosens, and it falls down from her shoulders, crumpling around her.

"I wish I had told you again," she murmurs. "Before…all that happened."

Yato straightens a bit, but doesn't move away. The tip of his nose brushes hers.

"Told me what?"

Hiyori's cheeks warm.

"I just—I think I remember once, I said something to you that was really important. And I wish I had said it again. That's all."

With effort, she makes her eyes focus on the face so close in front of her. It gives her a small amount of relief to see he's blushing too.

"That's not really a wish I can help you with," he says.

He takes her left hand where it rests on the mat, and kisses it twice: once on the knuckles, once on the palm. Hiyori's chest burns when he takes her right hand, and after examining it for a moment—the bluish black in the deepest areas of blight, and the sick, ashy purple of her fingernails—he leans down to it, and does the same.

"I love you," she says, before she can think about it too much and scare herself. Yato goes very still, his lips an inch above her hand.

"That was it, right?" she asks fearfully.

Yato sets her hand down. Before she can move, he cradles her face and kisses her full on the mouth. She clings to his shoulders, dizzy, until he lets her go enough to laugh breathlessly against her lips.

"I love you, too," he says. A single tear slides down his cheek. She catches it with her thumb before it falls to the mat.

Then she smiles, and kisses him again, long, and smiling, and sweet.

 _/ in a year /_

With her ayakashi-subduing ability, and the gradual slowing down of vent activity, phantoms no longer overrun the Near Shore. She hears it on the radio, and on the television: crime rates are dropping, along with suicide numbers, and the darkness that seemed to wrap itself around the whole country has loosened its hold.

The skies are clear again.

The sunshine is no longer a surprise.

She is still growing accustomed to the prayers and the wishes. It is strange to appear to someone, to hear and address their problem (usually by painlessly removing the phantom-shroud), and to understand that to them, the memory of her existence will last no longer than a bruise. It is disorienting to think of herself as a being of the Far Shore.

She wonders if her parents, her friends, or anyone who knew her will make a connection between the new god born from the cry of a dying city, and the girl whose death a year ago they mourned.

/

"You didn't even have to wait ten years for your first shrine," Yato wails. "I had to wait a _thousand_."

"Quit whining," Yukine gripes. "She deserves it waymore than you."

"Next thing I know, you'll want to switch masters and serve Hiyori instead. You have no loyalty, Yukine!"

"Maybe I _will_ switch."

"Maybe I _want_ you to!"

Hiyori sits across from the bickering pair and giggles. Nothing has changed.

It's true, she still has no shinki of her own. She doesn't need one—but she does often think about what it might be like to give a wandering soul a new name.

Later, when Yukine has fallen asleep, she and Yato leave the house to talk a walk in the coolness and quietness of the night. It's a habit they picked up over the past year: a vestige of a nightly patrol that used to be necessary, but is now just part of the routine.

They talk quietly, mostly about trivial things—more glad than ever to have the chance to even discuss trivial things. The return of trivialities means danger is no longer at the forefront of their thoughts.

His left arm wanders behind her, around her waist, pulling her gently into his side with the rhythm of each step. If someone were to watch the road where they walk, they might see a lovestruck young couple. Or they might see an elderly man and woman, strolling in the cool night and enjoying each other's company. They might see a pair of children, sneaking out after dark. They might see nothing but starlight and stirring grass.

In the faint luminosity, Hiyori's eye catches a speck of brightness a little way off the path ahead.

"What's that?" she asks, breaking the comfortable silence that had fallen between them. She points to the soft glow, and Yato looks in the same direction. His arm drops from around her, and both of them break off the path, into the grass and toward the brightness.

They stop a few feet away from it.

"It's a spirit," Yato says. "An uncorrupted one."

Hiyori stares down at it. It's tiny: smaller even than Yukine before he was named.

Somehow, she knows things about it simply from looking. This is a girl: eleven years old. She floats above the grass like a petal from a cherry tree.

"She's still untouched by ayakashi," Hiyori notes, with a touch of pride. It's been a very long time since such a tiny spirit could survive in the open like this. It means she's doing her job right.

"She should be given a name, before something else gets to her," Yato says. He looks at Hiyori.

She thought it would be a little while longer before this happened; she thought she'd have more time to prepare. But there is no chance she's leaving this helpless spirit behind for an ayakashi to ravage. She smiles nervously, and glances at Yato.

"Are you sure?" she asks, failing to not sound panicky. "You could finally have a second shinki."

Yato glances behind them, in the direction of the roof under which Yukine is fast asleep.

"Nah." He smiles fondly. "I can barely make it taking care of just _one_ whiny kid. Two would be pushing it."

His casual tone masks the affection beneath. He and Yukine are a good team. Nothing has to change for them, not for a long while yet.

Hiyori turns back to the spirit, still floating like an iridescent bubble above the ground. Since her godhood, she has never needed a shinki—her right hand is all she's ever used. _Although_ , she thinks, _there's no telling when that could change._

As though waiting to offer itself to her, the shape with which she will bond this spirit to herself appears in her head. Her arm extends, and the light of the naming shimmers underneath her fingernails.

Before opening her mouth, she glances at Yato again. He's standing a little off to the side, smiling at her.

She looks back at the hovering spirit, and speaks to it: words that seem to press on her tongue heavier than the rest of them, words older than the oldest god.

 _/ end /_

 **A/N: thank you so much for the kind words and messages that pushed me through months of writer's block. I truly hope you like the ending I gave this story.**


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